We are trying for a baby. Today I had dental bitewing xray. I am not pregnant at the moment.

[RealName]

But is this something I should be worried about? if I will become pregnant soon?

[Merida]

My dentist advised me that a dental xray is not harmful while pregnant and I have had one while pregnant, so I think nothing to worry about, particularly when not pregnant yet Good luck with everything!

[RealName]

Thank you. Sometimes is not good to make research on the internet as they often tell you all the horror stories.

[Merida in reply to RealName]

If I was to recommend one thing would be not to google stuff, I did at first and was lots of nonsense that gave me quite a fright!!!! So you're definitely right not to

[DrFluffy]

Nope - even if you were pregnant, no risk to bump!

[Caro13]

I had a dental xray about 2 or 3 weeks before getting pregnant & it doesn't seem to have done my little bean any harm

[lyracat]

No there's no need to worry about a dental X-ray. I'm a medical physicist and we study radiation protection in our training. The dose of radiation your baby would get from a dental X-ray is similar to a day or so of natural background radiation, so it's so low that its not worth worrying about. The regulations for the protection of pregnant patients say that pregnant patients should not be refused a dental X-ray because of radiation, the risks of not having your dental treatment (eg stress, pain) are probably greater than that from the radiation. In fact, there are no diagnostic procedures using X-rays which can be refused in pregnancy where the risks of not having the investigation outweigh the risks of radiation. Basically, the dose of radiation from diagnostic X-rays is so low that its not really all that harmful, for most plane film X-ray the radiation dose is less than you would get from cosmic rays if you took a flight to Spain. The only way your baby could be exposed to a really harmful dose of radiation are from standing next to a nuclear reactor (which you're not likely to do!), being exposed to an atomic bomb (again, not likely) or from having radiotherapy cancer treatment. There's a lot of nonsense on the Internet, and the really sad thing is that a lot of doctors are irrational about radiation too and get all twitchy about it and can't seem to distinguish between low doses and potentially harmful doses. Good on your dentist for being sensible.