Johns Hopkins Medicine

A myth often heard on the street is that using opioid drugs like heroin or fentanyl by inhaling them, snorting them or ingesting them is less likely to result in overdose than injection. This myth may be behind new CDC …

Is there a safe way to use street opioids? Elizabeth Tracey reports Read More »

109,000 people is the current number for people who died of drug overdoses in 2022, with over 70% of them due to illegally manufactured fentanyl and its lookalikes, the CDC reports. Michael Fingerhood, a substance use disorder expert at Johns …

Most overdose deaths involving illegal opioids aren’t from injection, Elizabeth Tracey reports Read More »

Most diagnostic x-rays, including those at your dentist, don’t require a lead apron anymore, several professional organizations, including the American Dental Association, have decided. Yet you may still see your technician wearing one. Mahadevappa Mahesh, a medical physics expert at …

Should you feel concerned if you see a radiation technician using a lead apron? Elizabeth Tracey reports Read More »

Why don’t you need a lead apron when you have dental x-rays? Johns Hopkins medical physics expert Mahadevappa Mahesh explains. Mahesh: When you go to dentist we all put on apron, there's no need to because the dental when you …

Improvements in technology helped eliminate the need for lead aprons for most x-rays, Elizabeth Tracey reports Read More »

If you’ve had X-rays to examine your teeth or lungs, you’ve probably been given a lead apron to drape over other parts of your body. Now the American Dental Association has joined other professional organizations to abandon this practice as …

Lead aprons can actually interfere with diagnostic X-rays, Elizabeth Tracey reports Read More »