Is it the economy? Fear of radiation? Loss of health insurance by potential patients? All of the above?

Whatever the cause or causes, this has not been a good year for the high-tech imaging business. The Diagnostic Imaging news service reports that CT and MR imaging volumes are flat or declining across the United States.

The article quotes Tom Cabot, vice president … read more »

Who should get whole-body MRI (WB-MRI)?  Patients with diabetes, rheumatic diseases, primary benign bone tumors, bone-marrow diseases, malignant melanoma, and breast or colorectal cancer. Who shouldn’t? Patients who just want a general health screening.

So concludes a group of German researchers who undertook “a selective literature review on recent technical innovations in the field of WB-MRI and the clinical uses of … read more »

Combining CT with PET could provide an effective—and more pleasant—alternative to colonoscopy in detecting polyps and cancer in the colon, according to the results of a new study published in the June issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Colorectal cancer affects approximately 6 percent of the population in the Western world and is one of the leading causes of cancer … read more »

With the FDA planning to hear public comments on radiation levels next week, potential good tidings come from a study with CT colonography and the unsuspected malignancies it found.

The procedure showed early stage tumors, more than 50% of them outside the colon, in more than one asymptomatic person among 200. Besides the 58 patients showing unsuspected cancer, 22 showed invasive colorectal cancer and 36 others had, among … read more »

The frequency of upper gastrointestinal (UGI) bleeding has decreased with the decreasing prevalence of peptic ulcer disease.

In the elderly, the incidence of upper gastrointestinal bleeding remains high, however, probably because of widespread use of NSAIDs and aspirin.

Overall, 70% to 80% of UGI bleeding stops voluntarily, and the remainder is treated endoscopically.

If the patient rebleeds, which occurs 10% to … read more »

The growing use of CT scans before appendectomies seems to help lower the number of unneeded surgeries in women of childbearing age, according to a study in the February issue of Radiology.

“We found that rising utiization of preoperative CT over the past decade, along with advances in CT technology, coincided with a significant decrease in negative appendectomies among women 45 … read more »

CT enteroclysis, what some doctors have called the gold standard imaging test for diagnosing small bowel disease, may be helpful in evaluating uncomplicated celiac disease in patients with nonspecific gastrointestinal symptoms, says a study recently published in Radiology.

The study looked at 44 patients, 32 of whom had a known diagnosis of uncomplicated celiac disease at the time of CT enteroclysis … read more »

The objective of a recent study was to determine if gadolinium administration is necessary for MRI follow-up of patients with cystic pancreatic lesions.
… read more »

A recent study set out to emphasize the technical component of polyp evaluation, and to illustrate distinctive appearance of intestinal polyps on ultrasound. … read more »