CT

Despite a dismal start to 2009, most U.S. hospital radiology administrators expect restrictions against capital acquisitions to ease, giving them a chance to address their most pressing needs and acquire diagnostic imaging equipment later this year.

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Bucking the tide of medical professional opinion, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has decided against granting payment for CT colonography as a screening test for colorectal cancer. CMS ruled Tuesday that the clinical evidence remains inadequate to conclude that CTC is appropriate for that role.

Multiple studies have shown CT colonography to be just as efficacious and cost-effective as colonoscopy for colon cancer screening. Now Italian and U.S. researchers have found that CTC also does something colonoscopy cannot: simultaneously detect colorectal cancer and abdominal aortic aneurysms.

For years, high radiation dose exposure has been the bogeyman that kept the cardiac CT triple rule-out exam for chest pain from widespread application. That concern has been addressed with the use of radiation dose reduction techniques, according to a Thomas Jefferson University study.

GE launched today Healthymagination, a six-year initiative that will redirect half of its $1 billion healthcare R&D budget toward driving down the cost of healthcare while boosting access to improved care through technology and service innovations in the U.S. and around the world.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has launched an effort to create a running total of how much medical radiation patients are exposed to over time by issuing smart cards and modifying electronic medical records.

Financial penalties would be enforced against physicians who frequently recommend inappropriate medical imaging under a set of policy options outlined in a potentially influential report issued April 30 by the Senate Finance Committee.

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Seriously injured patients have a better chance of surviving multiple trauma when they are evaluated in the emergency room with whole-body CT, according to a study of more than 4500 cases from Germany.

InSight buys two Boston area centers

The American College of Radiology Imaging Network will expand its research scope beyond cancer to add applications that advance clinical care in areas such as neuro and cardiovascular imaging.

More than eight years of data from nearly 500 patients suggest that frequent monitoring with CT to look for complications after endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms is unnecessary and that it could be done instead with ultrasound.

The CT imaging rate for pregnant women at two hospitals affiliated with Brown University’s medical school grew at an explosive 25.3% annual rate from 1997 and 2006, while medical imaging involving ionizing radiation for this population more than doubled.

Plastic surgery may have some early roots. German physicians have scanned the bust of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt with CT, showing marked differences between an inner core -- that more accurately depicts the queen -- and the outer layer where her nose bump is smoothed and her wrinkles are erased.

Nuclear physicians praised the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ decision to expand Medicare coverage of PET scans in the initial treatment strategy of most solid cancers and myeloma. More than a third of Medicare patients will now be able to get PET scans without going through the National Oncologic PET Registry.

The debate between GE and Bracco over GE’s marketing of its Visipaque contrast agent continues despite a U.S. District Court finding that GE used false advertising to win sales for the x-ray contrast agent.

Inflammation of the upper airways is most often due to the common cold. CT and MRI show complexparanasal sinus anatomy.

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Nuclear medicine advocates enlisting the help of Congress have forced the Department of Energy to continue to fund basic research for radioisotope and imaging instruments design, despite DOE plans to use its scientists to develop nuclear imaging tools for biological and environmental applications.

Micronodules, tree-in-bud appearance, consolidations, cavities, bronchiectasis, and lobular consolidations are frequent CT abnormalities of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Potential deadly traumatic pneumothoraces can be measured in the emergency room with a computer-aided volumetric technique that helps move patients from diagnosis to treatment many times faster than conventional visual assessments of the condition with multislice CT.

Simple physician checklists, diagnostic decision-support systems, or second looks at medical imaging exams could help to reduce the estimated 40,000 to 80,000 hospital deaths in the U.S. from diagnostic errors.

Using biotechnology developed from fireflies and seaweed, Johns Hopkins researchers are developing radiopaque stem cells for targeted delivery of therapy in patients with peripheral arterial disease. The technique may allow guidance and tracking of stem cell injections meant to grow new blood vessels and offer a way to confirm therapy response.

A CT-based lung cancer screening strategy that combines tumor morphology and tumor doubling times to evaluate cancer risk is producing good results, according to interim data from a Dutch-Belgian screening trial presented at the ECR.