Word: ct
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...between stress and visceral fat in people in a controlled fashion isn't easy. So the team turned to monkeys. For nearly 2½ years, she and her team fed the animals a typical Western diet, with 40% of calories coming from fat, measured their cortisol levels and used CT scans to calculate the amount of visceral fat each monkey carried...
...CT scans showed that group leaders and the second most dominant monkeys had lower amounts of visceral fat than their subordinates, who carried the bulk of their body fat in their guts. In human populations, something similar happens: studies have linked lower social status to a higher incidence of metabolic syndrome - the condition whose symptoms include high blood pressure, high glucose levels and being overweight - which promotes heart disease...
...Doctors use physical exams and CT scans to identify appendicitis, the infection and inflammation of the small, thin pouch attached to a segment of the large intestine in the lower right abdomen, but often, when the diagnosis is less than clear, they err on the side of caution, recommending surgery - the alternative is to risk a burst appendix, which in fact happens frequently enough while patients wait for test results. According to past studies, somewhere between 3% and 30% of all appendectomies may be in patients who do not actually have appendicitis - conditions often mistaken for appendicitis include constipation, gastroenteritis...
...spends more on health care than any other country does, and studies have suggested that as much as 30% of it - perhaps $700 billion a year - may be wasted on unneeded care, mostly routine CT scans and MRIs, office visits, hospital stays, minor procedures and brand-name prescriptions that are requested by patients and ordered by doctors every day. Orszag is particularly obsessed with research by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, documenting huge regional variations in costs but virtually no variations in outcomes. For example, chronically ill patients in Los Angeles visited doctors an average...
...incentives that discourage evidence-based medicine, because they all receive fixed salaries. They don't make more if they do more to patients, and they don't make less if they take more time to talk to them - even if they use the time to explain why a CT scan or a wonder drug advertised on TV might not be advisable. They don't have to worry about reimbursements that overvalue radiological tests and invasive prostate treatments, undervalue preventive care and watchful waiting and put zero value on returning a phone call or thinking about a case. "We've been...