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Clinics facing ban on £1,000 CT scans for 'worried well'
27.06.08
Private health clinics could be banned from selling unnecessary CT scans to the "worried well".
The Government is consulting experts this week over plans to outlaw the diagnostic tests for cancers and heart disease, which some clinics sell for up to £1,000 per scan.
It comes after a report found computerised tomography scans could expose patients to a radiation dose up to 200 times that of an ordinary chest X-ray.
Dr Roy Hamlet of the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, which compiled the report, said many patients with no symptoms paid to have CT scanswhich could put their life in danger.
He said: "There is no benefit, for example, in a lung scan. Everyone has bits that flap about and they may well be seen on a scan. Then what do you do? Ask them to open you up to see if it is a life-threatening tumour? That in itself is an extremely dangerous operation."
A DoH spokesman said: "CT scans involve a significant dose of radiation. Comare strongly recommends that services offering whole-body and lung CT scanning of healthy individuals should no longer be allowed. We are now consulting on this."
Dr John Giles, clinical director of CT scan company LifeScan, insisted the procedure was safe.
Reader views (1)
I am a qualified Diagnostic Radiographer who worked in the NHS for 27 years and for the last 10 years I have worked for a private company whose primary business is radiation measurement and quality assurance.
The risks associated with radiation dose are well understood. There is in fact no safe limit for radiation doses and all diagnostic examinations involving the use of ionising radiations, e.g X-ray or gamma radiations, carry a finite risk to the patient. It is for this reason that examinations of this kind should only be carried out if the 'risk/benefit relationship' is considered and the examination is believed to be of benefit to the management of the patient's clinical condition. The principal that applies is known by the acronym ALARA which stands for 'as low as reasonably achievable'. In other words if the examination is not indicated then it should not be performed or if the examination is indicated the method of obtaining clinical information should be as radiation economical as possible. For these reasons there can be no justification for selling these examinations to asymptomatic members of the general public. Purely on Health and Safety grounds, the selling of these examinations to the general public who do not understand the associated risks and who do not exhibit any clinical indications should be banned.
If this were a food product that is discovered to carry a miniscule risk of causing cancer it would be wiped off the shelves in an instant!!
- Keith Thompson, Stafford, UK
