Americans are too fat for X-Rays
30
July
Well, it’s finally happened. As Jay Leno so aptly joked about, we humans have finally found a way to avoid being scanned by even Superman! Radiologists around the country are reporting that they are seeing increasing cases of obese Americans who are not getting the medial attention they need because they are either too fat to fit into the scanners or their fat is too dense to allow the X-Rays or sound waves to pass through.
Wow - we’ve got a problem here!
Radiologists claim that body images are limited by “Body Habitus” a term coined to describe the problem. Over the last 15 years the number of such cases has doubled.
“It is a major issue because … the patient may still have a tumor, the patient may have appendicitis, the patient may have other inflammatory processes. In an obese person, because the ultrasound beam does not get to the organs or get to them adequately enough, we cannot get a picture. It looks like a snowstorm — I don’t know if you have seen those televisions where it is just whiteout? It looks like that.” says Dr. Raul Uppot, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Of course this is great news for medical equipment manufacturers, who are now making special MRI machines with larger-bore holes and higher Tesla strength (read: better fat penetration) for obese and claustrophobic patients.
“For the patient, not knowing what is going on is a big issue. If you tell a patient ‘I am sorry — we just can’t sit you on our CT scanner,’ that is devastating to hear.”
-Via CNN Health
BBC also reports that the problem is spreading in the U.K. too. Already hospital beds are being strengthened to accept heavier patients and airlines around the world are being designed to carry heavier passengers (I can already see one immediate effect - the weight limit for luggage is being reduced and I am guessing that is to compensate for the increased weight of the travellers!)
Let’s do a favor to the world in general (and radiologists in particular) - let’s keep our sizes in check so we atleast fit in MRI machines.
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