Radiologist Ray Harron, MD, of Bridgeport, West Virginia, is fighting in court to restore his reputation six years after a federal judge in Texas shredded it in a case involving silica-related lung disease.

CSX Transportation, the target of thousands of lawsuits over the years alleging that it exposed employees to lung-damaging asbestos, has turned the tables and sued Dr. Harron and … read more »

A blood test could determine whether emergency patients with suspected traumatic brain injury need a CT scan—and might replace some CT scans.

So concludes a preliminary study published online Thursday in Annals of Emergency Medicine. The researchers discovered that patients with TBI had significantly higher blood levels of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) than those without.

In a statement, Linda Papa, MDCM, … read more »

Electronic sharing of patient information among all 12 major emergency departments in the Memphis, Tennessee, area resulted in annual savings of nearly $2 million, mostly because of reduced hospital admissions, according to a study published online last week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Interestingly, the study found that electronic health information exchange (HIE) use increased some types … read more »

What is it with the radiology system in Canada?

Sorry; we don’t mean to impugn an entire country, or an entire country’s worth of radiologists. But last week, the authority that governs the health-care system on the island of Newfoundland revealed what may be the third major Canadian radiology scandal in the past couple of years. This time, authorities say at … read more »

Radiologist Mary Hamer, MD, of Lake City, Florida, apparently reads scans better than she reads people. Numerous reports say she has sent tens of thousands of dollars to Joran van der Sloot, imprisoned in Peru on charges of killing one woman and suspected in the disappearance of another.

Dutch Web sites say she has described van der Sloot as “a beautiful … read more »

MRI Associates of Boise, Idaho, won a $52 million judgment earlier this week against a hospital that, in the opinion of the jury, violated a partnership agreement with the imaging company.

It’s the second time MRI Associates has won a big jury award from Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center of Boise. A jury in 2007 said MRI Associates deserved more than … read more »

A young woman who ended up paralyzed after two University of California, Davis radiologists missed an arteriovenous malformation in an MRI scan won a $7.6 million malpractice verdict on Friday.

The defense conceded that the abnormal mass was visible on the scan but said that it was “subtle” and therefore that missing it fell within the appropriate standard of care. The … read more »

Sigvard T. Hansen Jr., MD, a professor of orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington, doesn’t have much use for MRI. “I see 300 or 400 new patients a year,” Dr. Hansen, a foot and ankle specialist, told the New York Times. “Out of them, there might be one that has something confusing and might need a scan.”

The … read more »

Like Superman, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers can see through walls.

Well, not exactly like Superman. The researchers don’t have X-ray vision. Instead, they have a portable radar device that can produce real-time video showing any movement on the other side of a solid concrete wall.

And, again unlike Superman, the device doesn’t capture clear pictures through the wall. … read more »

Self magazine slams teleradiology in an article posted on the magazine’s Web site and the MSNBC site.

The magazine headline reads “The Hidden Dangers of Outsourcing Radiology.” The subhead elaborates: “That scan of your brain, bones or breasts you got last Tuesday? It might have been read by someone who isn’t a doctor and lives 12 time zones away. If, that … read more »