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By Marlemne Cimons
Food and Drug Administration
officials are worried that the growing popularity of full-body
scans for early health screening might be exposing
thousands of Americans to unnecessary and potentially dangerous
radiation.
Facilities offering
full-body computed tomography,
or CT, examinations, which
are heavily advertised and expensive, are sprouting nationwide,
luring affluent consumers who think they are buying peace
of mind with the promise of early warning for cancers, heart
problems and other diseases.
But, FDA officials
say, clinics and other facilities
are giving healthy consumers higher-than-conventional doses
of radiation that are unlikely to do any good.
"Some of these
people are in the business to scan anybody who comes through
the door," said Thomas B. Shope of the FDA's center for
devices and radiological health. "If you've got the money
in your wallet, you're going to get scanned."
There is little
the FDA can do about it, however. After the agency has approved
medical devices for any purpose, it has no authority to regulate
their actual use.
The FDA approved
the scanning devices to peer into individual sites on the
body where illness is suspected, but it cannot stop doctors
from using them for full-body scans.
The advanced technology,
which is part X-ray and part computer, produces three-dimensional
images of the inside of a person's body. The images are clearer
than those of X-rays, and they make it possible to detect
abnormalities earlier.
But
for people
without symptoms,
many doctors believe the risks from
the radiation more than offset the benefits from the unlikely
detection of some types of early cancers or other diseases.
Moreover, experts
note that suspicious but ultimately harmless findings can
trigger unnecessary additional testing and provoke needless
anxiety.
"For an average
Joe to walk in off the street and get himself screened from
head to toe is probably a bad idea, especially if he isn't
in any risk group," said John Cardella, chief of the
radiology department at the State University of New York-Upstate
Medical University in Syracuse, who served on an FDA advisory
panel examining the issue.
The scans emit
far more radiation than conventional X-rays -- a
CT scan of the chest delivers 100 times
the radiation of a conventional chest X-ray.
And "You are
doing more of the body at one time," Shope said. "You're
exposing all of the organs."
Most physicians
are not likely to prescribe full-body scans for their patients,
because studies have not proved them effective.
Consumers typically
decide on their own to get them and pay premium prices --
as much as $1,300 in some
facilities. Because the procedure is not covered by insurance,
there are no records of how many such scans are being performed
nationwide.
But magazines and
Web sites are flooded with ads promoting such scans as a way
to catch health problems early.
Jon Hyman, a spokesman
for Virtual Physical, a Baltimore-based facility, predicted
that within five years, rigorous academic studies will have
demonstrated that full-body scans' benefits outweigh the radiation
risks.
"We are saving
lives," he said. "We think five years from now this
will become common practice, that every adult will get a full-body
scan and it will be covered by insurance."
New
Jersey Star-Ledger
June 5, 2001
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