What is the safe dose of x-ray radiation in a day?

Question

I just had my chest x-ray last week. Because of a glitch in the x-ray machine developer, they had to repeat the procedure. I had to undergo an x-ray 3 times on that day. Is that still safe?

Answer 1

Perfectly safe. The old chest X-rays were scary, they used massive shots of radiation. The newer ones are excellent as the above poster mentioned.

To be  honest, they don't worry about the patient here, they're so safe. They worry about the tech who sits there, eight hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year pushing the button.

Answer 2

Thats perfectly safe.  Plain film x-rays do not use a huge amount of radiation.  

Answer 3

To put things in perspective you get a larger dose of x-ray radiation from an average one way international airline flight than you do from a couple of chest x-rays.

A chest x-ray is roughly one three hundredth of the average radiation from a full body CT scan and approximately one thousandth of the annual maximum recommended medical dose for an individual (based on UK legislation)

In short, 3 chest x-rays is a negligible dose and possibly shortened your lifespan by less time than it took you ask the question.  I hope that puts your mind at ease.

Answer 4

So you are saying you had three x-ray exposures total?  Usually we do a PA (with your chest against a board) and a lateral (side view).  You had those, then had to have one of them repeated?  I can tell you that chest x-rays use one of the lowest doses of radiation out there.  A normal, two view chest x-ray is the equivalent of about 10 days of living on earth, in terms of radiation exposure.  We are subjected to radiation exposure from many sources just living on this planet.

"The chest x-ray is one of the lowest radiation exposure medical examinations performed today. The effective radiation dose from this procedure is about 0.1 mSv, which is about the same as the average person receives from background radiation in 10 days."

http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm...

Many patients who are hospitalized have daily chest x-rays (some of them have several chest x-rays throughout the day, actually).  In the mornings, you will see the radiological technologists with their portable x-ray machines doing the tours of ICU, CCU and the general floors.