X-rays at East End Chiropractic
Our goal at East End Chiropractic is to help you maintain a healthy lifestyle, and we believe that in order for you to do so, it is important to take good care of your spine and joints. When you come to our office as a new patient, Dr. Olsen will perform a thorough evaluation to determine the root cause of the symptoms you are experiencing. The doctor may need to take x-rays to get a closer look at what’s going on. In the last year, we added x-ray equipment to our office. This has been a wonderful thing because, now, when the doctor requires x-rays to be done, we no longer need to refer our patients to an imaging center.
Are x-rays are required for all new patients? No. X-ray studies are only performed when the doctor deems them clinically necessary. Now, if you were x-rayed recently at another doctor’s office, and those x-rays pertain to the part of the body that we are focusing on, you probably will not need to have additional images done at our office.
A concern with x-rays is radiation exposure. When it comes to the dangers of radiation, the key factor is really the dosage. Thankfully, the effective dosage for spinal x-rays is very minimal (about 1.5 mSv). For more information, check out this website. Though the radiation dosage is minimal for spinal x-rays, we still take a number of precautions to reduce the incidence of unnecessary radiation exposure to the patient and those nearby. Our x-ray imaging system has been evaluated and cleared by the State of Tennessee’s department of Radiological Health, we use lead shielding to cover parts of the body that we are not imaging, and we do not x-ray women who are pregnant.
In review, we offer on-site x-ray imaging, we do so only when necessary, and we use the minimal dose of radiation necessary in order to obtain a quality image.
