You were wondering where the cancer came from?
"Study questions overuse of heart CT scans" by Marilynn Marchione, Associated Press March 15, 2015
SAN DIEGO — People checked with a heart CT scan after seeing a doctor for chest pain have no less risk of heart attack, dying, or being hospitalized months later than those who take a simple treadmill test or other older exams, a major federal study has found.
The results are a surprise. CT scans, fancy X-rays that give 3-D images of heart arteries, were expected to prove best and instead turned out to be just a reasonable alternative.
Doctors have used these scans for a decade without knowing whether they are better than traditional tests. The federal government funded the $40 million study — the largest ever of heart imaging — to find out.
It also revealed how much medical radiation most patients like this — 4 million in the United States each year — are getting. Radiation can raise the risk of developing cancer, yet few doctors are choosing heart tests that do not require radiation, the study showed.
‘‘It’s such a bad reflection on American medicine,’’ said one independent expert, Dr. Eric Topol of the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif. ‘‘Look at how much radiation they gave these poor people,’’ equivalent to 500 to 700 regular X-rays, he said. ‘‘That is despicable.’’
The study involved more than 10,000 patients in the United States and Canada. Results were released Saturday at an American College of Cardiology conference in San Diego and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Chest pain can stem from something as serious as a clogged artery or as harmless as indigestion.
I always thought it was what I happened to be reading at the time.
CT scans are widely used to diagnose heart problems in emergency rooms. The study aimed to determine their value for people who go to a doctor with new but stable, less severe symptoms suggesting hidden heart disease.
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