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A new study showed that repeated CT scans at childhood could triple the risk of brain cancer and leukemia.

This research is based on roughly 180,000 patients who received CT scan and were younger than 22 in the period of 1985 to 2002 in British hospitals. After following their health records until 2008, researchers found that 135 of them got brain tumors and 74 of them suffered from leukemia. It is much higher than the date from National Cancer Institute, where only 3 out of 100,000 normal kids get brain tumor and 4 out of 100,000 get leukemia every year.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute and the U.K. Department of Health gave financial support for this study, and the entire research report was published online on Thursday in the journal Lancet.

On Wednesday’s press briefing, lead author of this study Mark Pearce said, "CT scans are very useful, but they also have relatively high doses of radiation, when compared to X-rays.”

Pearce also pointed out that CT scans were acceptable in most conditions, but people still need to work on decreasing the amount of radiation. The problem of CT scans nowadays is its overuse.

Experts believe that at least half of CT scans being done in hospitals are not necessary. Part of the reason is that hospitals can get large insurance reimbursements from each CT image, because CT Scanners are expensive instruments.

Columbia University Medical Center Researcher, David Brenner, who has studied the safety of CT scans for a long time, gave an advice on CT usage.

“It's absolutely fair if your physician suggests that you or your child has a CT scan to ask that physician, ‘Why?’ Ask, ‘Are there good medical reasons why the CT scan is justified?’” said Brenner.