| « How Competitive Is Canadian Business? The Answer May Surprise You | A Case of Overexposure » |
What's In A Scan?
Good morning!
I hate to sound like I’m repeating myself (see my previous entry A Case of Overexposure ), but this just came across my desk. According to a recently-released report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives entitled “ What’s in a Scan? ,” Canadians may be putting themselves at risk with expensive screening tests based on medical imaging techniques:
“Controversial medical imaging procedures are being marketed and sold to Canadians as effective in screening healthy people for early detection of specific diseases, even though such screening is expensive, potentially harmful, and neither supported by the scientific literature nor recommended by professional bodies and regulators.”
The report goes on to quote Dr. Brian Lentle, former head of the Radiological Society of North America:
“Any radiation exposure is assumed to cause harm in older people beyond the reproductive age. The harm from screening procedures is radiation carcinogenesis – cancer induction. Such cancer induction is related to dose and dose-rate in a linear or linear-quadratic way that is explicit at high doses. There is no safe threshold that can be inferred. The evidence for harm at lower doses is less strong, but such harm may be reasonably assumed in the conservative practice of radiation medicine.”
Unfortunately, the report concludes that the public seems to be misinformed when it comes to the risks associated with some increasingly popular forms of medical imaging:
“People largely think scanning is safe (60% of our survey said that they thought there were no risks or safety issues associated with CT scanning or that they didn’t know of any) and erroneously believe (63%) that CT scanning exposes you to less radiation than conventional X-rays.”
At Picomole, we believe that the future of screening tests lies with a truly non-invasive and safe approach: analysis of exhaled breath samples. Our LifeSens breath tests are simple, fast, and do not expose the patient to any radiation risk whatsoever.
For more information, contact us today.
Yours truly,
John