The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) yesterday published a story, "Worries Mount Over Excessive CAT Scans." The story described a “growing number of medical professionals, managed-care companies and scanner manufacturers that are trying to rein in CT scanning out of concerns over excessive radiation, which is known to increase the risk of cancer."
It continued: "There's been an explosion in CT scanning in recent years. Scans increased by nearly 50% between 2000 and 2003, when they hit 57 million. The rise comes from rapidly advancing CT technology that gives doctors better, more-detailed information to work with, making the scan widely viewed as one of the most valuable diagnostic tools in the field. What's more, the test is noninvasive and typically doesn't cost anything for insured patients. The test has also become popular as a means for patients to get full-body scans as a check-up.
There haven't been any studies that directly examined whether people who had multiple CT scans went on to develop cancer. But as the number of CT scans has climbed, some doctors have started to take notice of individual patients who have received multiple scans that place their total radiation doses at levels near or beyond those of some survivors of the nuclear attacks on Japan in World War II.”
Posted by schwitz at November 3, 2006 07:52 AM | TrackBack