Word: ct
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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General Electric 50,837 --Electric fan (1902) --X-ray tube (1913) --First U.S. jet engine (1941) --Solid-state laser (1962) --Computed tomography, a.k.a. CT scanner...
...time, eight years ago, PET (positron emission tomography) machines, which can reveal subtle metabolic processes such as tumor growth, and CT (computerized tomography) scanners, which show precise anatomical details, were already in widespread medical use. But doctors, especially cancer surgeons, were often frustrated in their attempts to match the two different scans to determine, for example, the precise location of a tumor in relation to an organ or to the spinal column. There seemed to be no better way than simply "eyeballing" the two separate images...
...from always providing definitive answers, CT scans often produce ambiguity, particularly when healthy people are subjected to them. Most of the time the scans turn up harmless stuff--a little scar tissue, a benign growth. But when they do, doctors have to perform more medical tests, frequently including invasive procedures, just to make sure that the spot is really harmless. "There certainly will be some people whose lives are saved [by the screening]," says Dr. Ron Arenson at the University of California, San Francisco. "But you have to weigh that against maybe thousands of patients who have had to undergo...
That is why most insurers and employers refuse to pay for whole-body CT scans for healthy people. So the "worried well" wind up paying $500 to $600 out of pocket for their imaging tests. Call me cynical, but in this era of managed care, I can't help noticing how that income stream also serves to pay for a lot of very expensive equipment. I'm more concerned, though, that some folks might consider a "clean" CT scan an excuse to forget about doing the things that we know improve health, like quitting smoking, shedding excess pounds or exercising...
Still, there's no doubt that CT scans offer great potential as a screening tool. They're already providing useful snapshots of the coronary arteries, colon and lungs. Someday they may even replace more invasive tests. We're just not there...