CEO's Blog

Good morning!

A newly published report by the National Council on Radiation Protection & Measurements (NCRP) reveals that Americans are now being exposed to more than seven times as much ionizing radiation from medical procedures as was the case in the early 1980s. According to the NCRP report, the alarming increase in exposure was due mostly to the higher utilization of diagnostic imaging procedures.

The health risks due to radiation overexposure are not insignificant. A recent paper in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded that women with BRCA mutations (a group that is at high risk for breast cancer), should not receive annual mammograms before the age of 35 due to the risk of developing breast cancer from cumulative radiation exposure. Computed tomography (CT) scans, increasingly used in the diagnosis of lung cancer, colon cancer, and many other diseases, expose patients to relatively high levels of X-ray radiation. A chest CT, for example, exposes a patient to about 8 millisieverts of radiation - 80 to 400 times the radiation exposure from a chest X-ray.

Moreover, not only do diagnostic imaging techniques like mammography and CT expose patients to potentially dangerous amounts of ionizing radiation, but the costs are spiralling out of control. A recent study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in July found Medicare spending on medical imaging doubled to about $14 billion a year between 2000 and 2006.

Picomole’s LifeSens technology does not expose patients to any radiation, and offers a fast and cost-effective way to potentially screen for diseases like breast cancer and lung cancer by measuring disease-specific biomarkers in exhaled breath. If a LifeSens breath test indicated the possible presence of a particular disease, then a suitable imaging technology could be used to ‘see’ the problem, as is being done now.

We believe our LifeSens breath tests can be an integral part of the solution for containing soaring health care costs. Let us know what you think!

Yours truly,
John