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Awareness in the medical community is growing regarding the needless and potentially dangerous overuse of CT scans in hospitals and doctors' offices.
Doctors who choose to scan twice do a scan with contrast material and one without, to aid their diagnoses. However, radiologists claim this practice is unnecessary. It is also dangerous because of radiation: one CT scan equals approximately 350 chest X-rays.
Major university hospitals keep the incidence of two successive CT scans per patient down to 1% or do not do them at all. The state of Massachusetts utilized them 1% of the time.
Unfortunately, too many medical professionals subject their patients to multiple CT scans. 75,000 patients were scanned twice in 2008. 200 hospitals that year used double scans 30% of the time. The national average for this practice is 5.4%. Smaller hospitals are more likely to use double scans. For example, Memorial Medical Center in Michigan used them 89% of the time in 2008. However, they lowered their rate to 42.4% by 2010 and 3% so far this year. Similarly, St. John Health System in Tulsa held an 80% rate in 2008 but lowered that figure to 5% this year after mandating second opinions from radiologists.
According to a professor of radiology at the University of California, San Francisco, the high rates are due to a lack of awareness several years ago, though recent changes are encouraging.
The data has been compiled from 2008 figures -- the most recent to have been released -- but those who have looked at 2009 numbers claim much had not changed.
If you would like more information about how medical malpractice cases work in the state of New York, I encourage you to explore my educational website. If you have legal questions, I urge you to pick up the phone and call me at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at lawmed10@yahoo.com to answer your questions. That's what I do every day. I welcome your call.
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