Buy essay on History of Gonad Shielding and Its Importance Today

The development of the modern medicine is characterized by the growing importance of the implementation of new technologies. In this respect, the development of radiology is particularly important because radiology has opened the way for the development of new branches of medicine and totally new approaches to diagnosing and treatment of various diseases, including such dangerous diseases as cancer.

At the same time, the development of radiology raised the problem of the negative impact of X-rays on human health and organs which were vulnerable to the impact of X-rays in the course of diagnosing and treatment of patients. As the matter of fact, X-rays have proved to be dangerous to human health. At any rate, the exposure of human organs to X-rays makes them vulnerable to the negative impact of X-rays. In such a situation, the necessity of the protection of human organs from the impact of radiation is obvious. In response to this new challenge, the medical science has developed the gonad shielding which protects the human body and organs from the negative impact of radiation in the course of X-raying, when patients are exposed to the impact of radiation.

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In such a context, it is very important to understand why the gonad shielding was developed at all, what for and whether the impact of radiation on human body and organs is so significant that the protection of organs is needed. In this respect, it is possible to refer to the table 1, which shows the impact of radiation and gonadal doses from procedures patients normally undergo in the course of diagnosing and treatment.

Table 1. Gonadal doses from some typical procedures

Source: Health Physics Society. 2009. http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q4362.html

Hence, it is obvious that even the simplest procedures involving the use of X-rays expose individuals to the impact of radiation. At first glance, the doses patients are exposed to are not always dangerous but specialists (Bushberg, 2001) lay emphasis on the fact that the regular impact of radiation on human organs can lead to negative effects, including the increase of the risk of the development of cancer and other health problems provoked by radiation.

In fact, the findings concerning the negative impact of radiation on human health and the risk of the impact of radiation on human body and organs in the result of the use of X-rays raised the problem of the adaptation of X-rays technologies to new safety standards which should minimize the risk of the development of negative effects of radiation. In order to protect human body and organs from the impact of radiation, the gonad shields were developed. In fact, the construction of these protective elements was grounded on the use of materials, such as lead, which can protect human body from the impact of radiation. Today, the development of the gonad shields has reached a high level of development and they can protect human body from X-rays effectively. Modern gonad shields are different from first versions of these protection elements. At this point, it is possible to refer to Table 2 and Table 3 which reveal the high effectiveness of new gonad shields which have different forms and level of protection.

Table 2. The central plate encapsulates the shaped 2.0 mm thick lead shield.

Source: Gonad Protection. 2010. http://www.e-radiography.net/technique/gonad_protection.htm

Table 3. A simple tee-shaped lead shield. Fully encapsulated in stiff but pliable plastic.

Source: Gonad Protection. 2010. http://www.e-radiography.net/technique/gonad_protection.htm

The use of gonad shields is essential today as well as it used to be in the past because it is the health of patients that is at stake. In such a way, modern medicine has to keep developing new, more effective gonad shields which provide a higher level of protection and are more convenient to use in health care setting.

References:

Bushberg, J. A. et al. (2001). The Essential Physics of Medical Imaging (2nd ed.), Lippincott Williams & Wilkins