Present health of children given x-ray treatment to the anterior mediastinum in infancy.

1960 
ARECENT SURVEY showed that the incidence of neoplasia in a group of children who had been treated with x-rays in infancy for enlargement of the thymus gland was higher than that in either their untreated siblings or in children of the same age in the population at large (1, 2). In particular, the number of cases of leukemia and thyroid cancer in the irradiated children far exceeded the number expected in a normal group of comparable size and age distribution. Although the findings are consistent with reports of an increased incidence of malignant disease, especially leukemia, in other human populations exposed to ionizing radiation (3-7), certain features of this study are sufficiently unusual to deserve further investigation. First, the doses of radiation were smaller than those formerly believed to be carcinogenic. Second, whereas the thyroid neoplasia and other cancers were found only in children exposed to comparatively high doses of x-rays (more than 200 r), leukemia sometimes occurred in children re...
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