**8. Conclusions**

The discovery of nuclear power and the utilization to benefit humanity has been one of the defining moments of the modern era. While this discovery certainly has benefits, there are also unintended and intended consequences which we must continue to mitigate. In the field of medicine, what is clear is that radiation remains a crucial tool to diagnose and treat diseases. Understanding and minimizing the risks of using this tool remains a priority for the safety and well-being of patients, especially given the broad impact it has on organs throughout the body and the long-term effects. It falls upon health care professionals to remain vigilant and wellinformed to ensure that nuclear energy and radiation therapy remains a blessing and not a curse.

**15**

**Author details**

Jonathan Saleeby2

Maryann Bishop-Jodoin1

Worcester, MA, USA

, Linda Ding2

, Abdulnasser Khalifeh3

, Kenneth Ulin1

3 UMass Memorial Health Care, Worcester, MA, USA

provided the original work is properly cited.

, Paul Rava2

, Kevin O'Connor1

1 University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: tj.fitzgerald@umassmemorial.org

, Ameer Elaimy1

, Yankhua Fan<sup>2</sup>

and Thomas J. FitzGerald<sup>2</sup>

, Harry Bushe2

,

, Suhong Yu3

, I-Lin Kuo2

2 University of Massachusetts Medical School, UMass Memorial Health Care,

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

, Carla Bradford2

,

\*

,

James Shen1

Fenhong Liu<sup>2</sup>

*Radiation Injury and Emergency Medicine DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95262*
