The most revealing decision a clinician makes about a radiograph is often whether to take it at all. The first ADA and AAOMR patient-selection recommendations in more than a decade - and the first to address cone-beam CT - reframe imaging not as a schedule...
A thyroid collar is an act of care that photographs badly. In a rotating panoramic beam, the very material that stops the dose can cast a ghost across the jaw - and the guidelines have begun to ask whether the protection was worth the picture...
We are trained to fear the dose. We are rarely trained to fear the missed diagnosis. A cone-beam scan is a decision between two risks, not one - and the picture that goes unmade has a cost of its own....
Film punished overexposure by going dark. Digital rewards it with a cleaner picture - which is exactly how dose creeps upward, invisibly. Here is the number that fixes it....