Computed tomography (CT) is a scan of internal organs that creates cross-section images using X-rays. It’s a very popular kid on the medical technology block: Between 1980 and 2007, the number of CT scans performed in the U.S. increased from 3 million to 70 million. An estimated 29,000 future cancers, according to a National Cancer….
Continue ReadingRadiation Safety
What We Don’t Know About Imaging Test Radiation–A Lot
File this one in our ongoing series about miscommunication between doctors and patients. This time the subject is radiation and how little most patients know about it. Last week we posted an item about how doctors sometimes mislead, even lie, to their patients when discussing the risks and benefits of certain treatments or mistakes they….
Continue ReadingMore Evidence of Over-Reliance on Mammography
Another study examining the benefits and risks of routine mammograms has confirmed earlier concerns that, in many cases the tests at best complicate the assessment of breast health and at worst pose significant harm for people whose results show the presence of a small mass. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers….
Continue ReadingAirport X-ray Devices Are Removed … But Not for the Right Reasons
The medical community has begun to accept that the use of X-rays as a first-response, default diagnostic tool often is questionable. The amount of radiation a person can accumulate over a lifetime of X-ray exposure can be significant and risky (see our post about the overuse of such scans.). One such use of X-ray technology….
Continue ReadingUnnecessary Testing Happens When Doctors Own Medical Equipment
When a diagnostic test result is negative, usually it’s cause for relief. But when the preliminary results of a study showed that nearly 9 in 10 MRI scans were negative, eyebrows were raised. Not because the test results were questionable, but because of who owned the equipment used to conduct them. As described in a….
Continue ReadingAnnual Chest X-Rays Don’t Help Smokers Beat Lung Cancer
A new study might add to the perception that U.S. medical care is uncontrollably expensive thanks in part to unnecessary tests. “Screening by Chest Radiograph and Lung Cancer Mortality” concludes that people who have an annual chest X-ray do not have a significantly lower mortality rate than people who don’t. The study, whose lung data….
Continue ReadingCellphone Hazards: Radiation? Maybe; Germs? Big Time
When you get up close and personal with your cellphone, what are you exposing yourself to, literally? Dangerous radiation? Maybe. Nasty germs? Most certainly. Two studies examining different potential hazards of cellphones have been in the news lately. One concerns the ongoing debate about the radiation risks of extended close contact with your phone, and….
Continue ReadingEmergency Room Use of CT Scans Soars
Another episode in the if-you-build-it-they-will-come (and pay) story of medical technology has been written recently by hospital emergency rooms. In 1996, about 3 in 100 ER patients were given a CT scan; by 2007, the figure had grown nearly fivefold, to 1 in 7 ER patients, according to a new study in the Annals of….
Continue ReadingStudy Casts Doubt on Brain Cancer from Cellphones
Hold your cellphone against your head too long and you can get a brain tumor. Text too often and you can forget how to spell. Converse on your Bluetooth while waiting in line and annoy everyone around you. One of those statements is undeniably true, one could be true, and one-about brain tumors-is probably false,….
Continue ReadingLung Cancer Screening–Did You Get the Full Story?
Nobody wants to get lung cancer. Nobody who has it looks forward to the radical treatment such a diagnosis usually demands. But a recent research study lifted a bit of the dark cloud hovering over these patients. It found a significant decrease–20%–in deaths among lung cancer patients screened annually for three years with a certain….
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