Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

A new report from the Medicare watchdog, the Professional Services Review, has found several cases of doctors ordering high radiation CT scans without clinical justification.

CT scans take three dimensional pictures of the body and can more easily diagnose problems such as cancers and cardiovascular disease but they increase the risk of cancer by one in a thousand.

The chairman of the West Australian Faculty of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Peter Maguire says patients expect the scans and doctors order the scans to legally protect themselves.

But, Dr Maguire says doctors should not feel pressured into ordering the scans.

"The old fashioned clinical judgement is not to be ignored and doctors are trained to sort problems out without investigations and plain x-rays may be sufficient in certain circumstances."

He says doctors order the scans to ensure they have not misdiagnosed a patient.

"People have grown to expect CT scans for the investigation of various things and patients often seem disappointed if you say it is not necessary."

Source: ABC News

Discuss more about CT in the CT user group.