Heart Check America, a multistate chain that offers full-body CT scans and other “preventive imaging,” suffered the latest in a series of legal blows last week when Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued the company.

The attorney general accused owner Sheila Haddad and manager David Haddad, her son, of using “unfair and deceptive business practices” to pressure customers into 10-year screening … read more »

Monster tornadoes slashed across northern Alabama on April 27, leaving a horror-movie scene of obliterated buildings and broken bodies — including broken young bodies.

The storms struck in the early evening, shredding some of Birmingham’s northern suburbs. (To get an idea of their malevolence — there’s no other word that fits — click here.) Minutes later, patients began flooding into Children’s … read more »

Doing two CT chest scans—one with contrast agent and one without—for the same patient on the same day remains a problem at some hospitals, according to the New York Times.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) puts information on its Hospital Compare Web site about how often hospitals perform various procedures. The figures include only procedures for which Medicare … read more »

The Denver office of Heart Check America, a national “preventive imaging” company, closed last week after state regulators ordered it to stop performing scans without doctors’ referrals and properly licensed supervising physicians.

The company advertised directly to the public, offering its services without a referral. According to the Denver Post, the X-ray Certification Unit of the Colorado Department of Public Health … read more »

Earlier this month, a Pennsylvania jury awarded $550,000 in a medical-malpractice case against a radiologist for allegedly failing to properly report a mass that showed up on a chest CT scan.

The mass, on the right lung of Irene Doherty of Scranton, Pennsylvania, turned out to be cancerous. Another scan 23 months later revealed that the mass had doubled in size … read more »

Preliminary research in Toronto indicates that a special formulation of antioxidants taken orally before imaging can reduce cell damage from ionizing radiation by as much as 50 percent.

“In our initial small study, we found that preadministering to patients a proprietary antioxidant formulation resulted in a notable dose-dependent reduction in DNA injury,” said Kieran J. Murphy, MD. He added:
This could play … read more »

A new imaging strategy for diagnosing possible cases of pulmonary embolism (PE) in the emergency department could both increase patient life expectancy and significantly reduce costs, according to a study led by a University of Cincinnati researcher.

The most common test for PE (in which a blood clot, usually from the legs, travels to the lungs and lodges in a pulmonary … read more »

American College of Radiology researchers say doctors who “self-refer” for imaging on equipment they own or lease should not receive Medicare reimbursement except for X-rays. According to the study, self-referral almost never shortens the duration of an illness and usually increases costs.

Supporters of self-referral—in which patients are sent for imaging on equipment controlled by the referring physician, and for which … read more »

CT works well as a lung-cancer screening tool for high-risk populations, but only if done with a strict clinical protocol in place and with input from a multidisciplinary care team, according to University of Cincinnati researchers.

The Cincinnati area presents a particular challenge because of its high rate of the fungal infection histoplasmosis—three times the national average. Histoplasmosis increases the likelihood … read more »

Children exposed to head and neck radiation, whether for treatment of cancer or diagnostic CT scans, face an elevated risk of thyroid cancer for more than five decades after the initial radiation exposure, according to research at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York.

The findings appear in the current issue of Radiation Research. Lead author M. Jacob … read more »