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Article: Our views: ; CT scans are a great advance; But like prescription drugs, scans also bring new risks of their own
- Article from:
- Charleston Daily Mail
- Article date:
- September 12, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2008 Charleston Daily Mail. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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THE CT scan is one of the marvels of the age. But like
everything, what addresses one problem can also create others. Alan
Zarembo of the Los Angeles Times looked at the tradeoffs recently.
The first computed tomography scanner in the United States
appeared at the Mayo Clinic in 1973. Today, the nation has 24,000 CT
machines - three times the density per million people as the rest of
the industrialized world.
American physicians ordered 68.7 million CT scans last year -
three times as many as in 1995.
There are good reasons for that: CTs let doctors see things they
could not see before. They represent a real improvement in medicine.
"Talking about reducing the number of scans is like trying ...