[cricket]

"Dr. Barnett Kramer, director of the National Institutes of Health's office of disease prevention, said: "For every 100 healthy people who undergo a scan, somewhere between 30 and 80 of them will be told that there is something that needs a workup - and it will turn out to be nothing."

This is the lamest defense yet; and perhaps betrays the more common reason for this industry's demise. I mean. . .how many people have had a test based on a 'suspicion'. . .that turned out to be something innocuous.

Good grief. . .this is the traditional route that many follow; having had an exam by their own Doctor. Of course, herein lies the bigger problem; someone ie . . .a physician; is getting cut out of the traditional routing/appointment path of patient. . .or so they imagine.

Think, in fact, this would have increased their patient load; as more people are willing to initiate medical exams at a less invasive starting point. . .

But whatever: the 'better safe than sorry' route, probably merits a huge amount of the 'testing business'. . .some of that sorry of course, being protection against the dreaded law suit.

Just this week heard three people say they were getting 'cat scans' for their sinuses. . .ok. . .not saying it is not warrented; but the sudden popularlity of scanned sinusis; for a sinus infection. . .makes me pause and wonder. . .

THAT said. . .I am sorry these places are closing. I think, at some point in time; they will be back; and be more acceptable; perhaps even the required 'first step' to medical evaluations.

But then. . .what do I know! ;^#

[neverdem]

This is the lamest defense yet; and perhaps betrays the more common reason for this industry's demise. I mean. . .how many people have had a test based on a 'suspicion'. . .that turned out to be something innocuous.

hamartoma A benign (noncancerous) tumor which is made up of tissues normally found in the area that it is in, but in an unusual mixture. This type of tumor results from a developmental anomaly of embryonic cells.

false-positive (false-pos·i·tive) (fawls¢pos¢[ibreve]-tiv) 1. denoting a test result that wrongly assigns an individual to a diagnostic or other category, e.g., one that labels a healthy person as diseased in screening for detection of that disease. 2. an individual so categorized. 3. an instance of a false-positive result.

I probably spent over an hour at PubMed trying to find the incidence and prevalence of hamartomas. Here's PubMed if you feel lucky. Click on related articles.

The issue is if you are asymptomatic and the next step in the workup is an invasive procedure to obtain a biopsy for a possibly benign lesion.

[Colorado Doug]

I am sorry to see these places closing too. I was recently charged by the hospital, about $14,000 for an angiogram (once they finished unbundling and double/triple charging me for everything) I was told that I had an entrapped artery. I went in for surgery and instead of what they told me, I had an aneurysm the size of a fist behind my knee. I would rather pay much less for the wrong diagnosis or perhaps I would have had the right diagnosis with a CT or MRI.

I am all for deregulating health care.