Friday 24 March 2017

For the last 40 years the use of Computed Tomography “CT” in Medical Imaging has been increasing dramatically. Yearly CT scans done in US have risen from less than 3 million in 1980 to currently being more than 80 million a year. Last year in Australia, Medicare has paid for 3 million CT examinations that does not include Hospital inpatients, private insurance and workers compensation and Motor vehicle accident patients. CT technology went through a phenomenal progress with Image quality and excelled to become the ultimate diagnostic tool in medicine. The only missing pieces from the puzzle were Radiobiology and the mutagenic impact of ionising radiation on humans. Three from every 10 thousand patients exposed to ionising radiation will die from cancer. The grey zone is the neurological and immune system disorders that are developed even if cancer is not developed. It has also been estimated that in the USA, 29 000 future cancers (approximately 2% of the cancers diagnosed annually in the United States) could be related to CT performed in the United States in 2007. An Australian study that looked at more than 680 000 people who had CT scans as children compared with some 10 million children who did not have a CT scan had a 24 percent increased cancer risk. Each additional scan boosted the risk of increased cancer by 16 percent. Is that ethically sound? We need our diagnostic tools. If Ionising Radiation is not the answer where do we go from here? Five minutes MR Screening is the new paradigm. Come along to understand the BMDH concept, see the images and prepare yourself to move away at warps speed in 2020.