• Q. I am 34 weeks pregnant. I recently broke a tooth and need to go to the dentist. Can I safely get an X-ray?

  A. The quick answer...YES, but read on.

  X-rays are never something we promote during pregnancy for fear of creating malformations in a developing baby. But there's two things to consider:

• TIMING DURING PREGNANCY: The forming fetus is most at risk during the early stages of it's development. So we especially don't like X-rays in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. On the other hand, by late pregnancy (over 37 weeks), taking an X-ray of mom's abdomen is like taking an X-ray of a newborn baby. Baby is well formed and at no significant risks.

• NEED FOR X-RAY: One must always weigh the risks and the benefits. If your life depends on the outcome of an X-ray, so does the developing baby's, so in some cases an X-ray, while not ideal, may be important enough to have. If you do have one, always insist on a leaded shield for your abdomen.

  More to your specific case, dental x-rays are less than 1/10th the exposure of a standard chest X-ray (which is also quite a minimal exposure risk).

  Bottom line? Avoid x-rays while pregnant, wherever possible. This is especially true in early pregnancy. X-rays in late pregnancy are probably of minimal risk if any and dental x-rays involve less than 1/10th the exposure to radiation. The choice, of course, is yours.

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