3 ms·

While your comment as a whole is thoughtful and well written, I'm surprised to hear you say, "Medical imaging is not done very often..." Medical imaging is com

While your comment as a whole is thoughtful and well written, I'm surprised to hear you say, "Medical imaging is not done very often..." Medical imaging is commonly overused, and its overuse is recognized as being one of the leading causes of certain types of cancer. For example, the original story explains... "In a 2011 report sponsored by Susan G. Komen, the Institute of Medicine concluded that radiation from medical imaging, and hormone therapy, the use of which has substantially declined in the last decade, were the leading environmental causes of breast cancer, and advised that women reduce their exposure to unnecessary CT scans." (The substantial decline refers to hormonal therapy, not imaging.)

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IsTom 13y ago
Perhaps it varies wildly between countries. I've never heard of anyone I know having a CT scan, but I know of 3 MRI scans.
- gus_massa 13y ago
  MRI is very different from CT. CT use X-rays, which is an ionizing radiation. MRI uses a very strong magnetic field, and as far as we know it doesn’t increase the cancer rates. The final images are quite similar in appearance (semi transparent films with a black background), but the underlying process is very different.
- seestheday 13y ago
  I've lived in both the us and Canada. I noticed that mri and CT scan scans were really easy to get done in the us, but would often require a month or more of waiting in Canada for non Urgent issues. I wonder how much the overuse contributes to differences in health care costs between countries?
carlob 13y ago
This reminds me of an article about Komen and the abuse of mammograms http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/our-feel-good-war-on-breast-cancer.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/our-feel-good-war...
- DanBC 13y ago
  That is a great, powerful, article. Thank you for posting the link. > For an individual woman in her 50s, then, annual mammograms may catch breast cancer, but they reduce the risk of dying of the disease over the next 10 years by only .07 percentage points — from .53 percent to .46 percent. Reductions for women in their 40s are even smaller, from .35 percent to .3 percent. Many people are going to be baffled by risk presented like this. Presenting the numbers differently is helpful to let people understand the risks. "Imagine 10,000 women like you. Of those X will die from this disease. But if we take those same 10,000 women and give them mammograms we find that Y will die from the disease". Sometimes X will be 2 and Y will be 1 (50% decrease in risk) or X will be 100 and Y will be 2 or X will be 100 and Y will be 99. Presenting the numbers this way allows most people to understand the risks better.
moogleii 13y ago
Thoughtful and well-written can often mask being wrong.
moeffju 13y ago
This varies a lot by country. Neither MRI nor CT are commonly used in Germany, for example, unless there is a clear medical necessity.

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IsTom 13y ago

Perhaps it varies wildly between countries. I've never heard of anyone I know having a CT scan, but I know of 3 MRI scans.

gus_massa 13y ago
MRI is very different from CT. CT use X-rays, which is an ionizing radiation. MRI uses a very strong magnetic field, and as far as we know it doesn’t increase the cancer rates. The final images are quite similar in appearance (semi transparent films with a black background), but the underlying process is very different.
seestheday 13y ago
I've lived in both the us and Canada. I noticed that mri and CT scan scans were really easy to get done in the us, but would often require a month or more of waiting in Canada for non Urgent issues. I wonder how much the overuse contributes to differences in health care costs between countries?

carlob 13y ago

This reminds me of an article about Komen and the abuse of mammograms http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/our-feel-good-war-on-breast-cancer.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/our-feel-good-war...

DanBC 13y ago
That is a great, powerful, article. Thank you for posting the link. > For an individual woman in her 50s, then, annual mammograms may catch breast cancer, but they reduce the risk of dying of the disease over the next 10 years by only .07 percentage points — from .53 percent to .46 percent. Reductions for women in their 40s are even smaller, from .35 percent to .3 percent. Many people are going to be baffled by risk presented like this. Presenting the numbers differently is helpful to let people understand the risks. "Imagine 10,000 women like you. Of those X will die from this disease. But if we take those same 10,000 women and give them mammograms we find that Y will die from the disease". Sometimes X will be 2 and Y will be 1 (50% decrease in risk) or X will be 100 and Y will be 2 or X will be 100 and Y will be 99. Presenting the numbers this way allows most people to understand the risks better.

moogleii 13y ago

Thoughtful and well-written can often mask being wrong.

moeffju 13y ago

This varies a lot by country. Neither MRI nor CT are commonly used in Germany, for example, unless there is a clear medical necessity.