Since many people don’t know the difference between CT and MRI, I was wondering if patients who get a CT even know about the radiation risks. I found a study that addresses this issue. A large medical center surveyed 235 patients who underwent either a CT or PET-CT. Researchers found that one third of patients receiving scans did not realize ...

Many people don’t know the differences between CT and MRI and when each should be used. I have to say I was one of those people until I attended the proper schooling. Patients often mistake the two machines upon entering the CT room, reaching quickly for their metal objects. This would give us all a little laugh. Most trauma patients go right ...

Imagine for a moment that you are a doctor working in a remote village in South America. You want to quickly and effectively assess a number of patients who are presenting with similar symptoms. Thanks to Aydogan Ozcan and his colleagues at UCLA you can. They have developed rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) to make this screening process incredibly ...

It is estimated that up to 1% of all cancers in the United States can be linked to medical radiation. This means with each x-ray or CT scan the risk increases. A recent study in The Journal of Cancer found a link between dental x-rays and brain tumors called meningiomas. The majority of the tumors are benign but depending upon their location they ...

Having worked in an emergency room of a level 1 trauma center I saw my fair share of traumas. Patients were usually in the trauma bay for 5-10 minutes and then immediately brought next door to CT. A new study out of Germany recommends that emergency room doctors wait 30 minutes before ordering CT scans on trauma patients.   If the scan ...

As the NFL playoffs continue this weekend, I did some research to find out if all NFL stadiums are equipped with x-ray machines. This is something I have always wondered about and found the answer today. The year was 1973 and Dale Hackbart was playing in the first regular season game for the Denver Broncos against the Cincinnati Bengals. Just ...

An article this week comes to us from the University of California at Irvine that may hold the secret to dramatically decreasing radiation doses for CT and PET scans. The mathematicians behind this innovative idea ''have developed an algorithmic method that would slash by nearly 90% the raw data needed to create life saving medical images ...

As CT technologists we often wonder if the scan we are performing is really necessary. Do we not fully understand the severity of the illness, have we not taken a thorough history, or are we thinking about the potential unnecessary radiation the patient is about to receive. These are all things that pop into our minds from time to ...

The dangers of CT have been in the news more and more recently. I read an article in USA Today last week that discussed the health risks of CT, the overutilization of scans, and the projected risks of cancer being greater than previously thought. “A study published last year in the Archives of Internal Medicine projected that 29,000 future cancers ...

This week I saw my first patient refuse her CT scan due to her concerns of receiving too much radiation. She stated that she has had numerous scans recently and knows that the radiation can be dangerous. This led me to research this topic a bit and gather some more information so I could be better informed. I found an article in USA Today that ...