Does Medical Imaging Need Better Regulation?

Shouldn't the government have more oversight over open-ended questions? Some experts think that improperly asked questions may lead to confusion and mistakes in certain vital industries. Other experts argue that too much regulation may stifle inquisitiveness and result in formulaic questions that never address the issue at hand.

What's your position?

Of course all types of medical imaging must be regulated, but with a lot of very influencial lobbyist, most of the gov't agencies are under their influence /payrolls, specially the FDA. Having an oversight coming from their end is a big joke. The best way we can approach this issue, in my opinion is thru education. By educating the general public I believe will be more effective. By policing our own ranks to be more vigilant and knowledgeable and aware on the dangers of over exposures or unnecessary radiations to our bodies I think will be more effective. For ultimately it will be our decision, we are the ones who decide to either accept or deny whatever different clinicians are proposing to do on our bodies.

I can't see regulation stifling innovation in CT, which is a very mature technology. Any innovation in the CT scan should not involve increased doses of radiation. They are high enough as it is.

What bugs me is, where are the truly innovative, and safer technologies that have been waiting in the wings, such as Optical Coherence Tomography? and various versions of in vivo RAMAN.

True they have limits in the depth they can penetrate, but they have much finer resolution than CT scans, and at minimum they would help to eliminate some unnecessary exposures to radiation by taking the place of CT.

And these technologies are inexpensive (relatively speaking) as well as posing no health risk to the patient.

We already tend to over-regulate everything on God's green earth. Whatever happened to informed patients asking doctors pointed questions? For some reason, some people think the government needs to be in everybody's knickers. There is this tendency to dumb down the populace with government control over so many aspects of peoples' lives so they have no need to think for themselves. It's really sickening.

Your rant is better aimed at something people have at least a small understanding of.

The average person is too stupid to look out for themselves in most situations - let alone in medical situations.

The doctors use excessive everything to try to protect themselves from lawsuits and the shyster, slimy lawyers.

Maybe it's laziness. Perhaps people don't want to be bothered to have to learn anything or think for themselves or heavens, even make a decision.

I know when I was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma (benign tumor), I went to a second ENT for a second opinion on the treatment approach. I also did my own research (40-60 hours of searching and reading). I over-rode the recommendations of both of them. They strongly recommended micro-surgical removal at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles. House is a fine, well-respected institution and considered the premier institution in this field, but the outcomes of the surgical procedures at that time resulted in significant side-effects and additional surgeries about 30% of the time. Those are lousy odds. Never mind the week long hospital stay and six weeks of recuperation after they drill a hole into your head. (Middle fossa approach)

The ENT's were not up to speed on the latest treatments and had their own biases. I chose fractionated stereotactic radiosurgery (FSR) at Johns Hopkins (the late Dr. Jeffery Williams,) in Feb 2001 and I have been VERY happy with the outcome. My treatments consisted of a half-day set-up (constructed a 'face mask' to fixture my noggin in the LINAC treatment machine, and then took a series of low-dose X-rays to precisely determine the tumor's location within my skull). The actual treatments were done over a period of five days, outpatient basis and took less than an hour each.

Visiting the dentist's office for a cleaning causes more discomfort than this procedure. Side effects were almost non-existent. On the fourth treatment, I had a very slight feeling of nausea afterwards but it passed in less than an hour. I have had three MRI's over the years to check for re-growth of the tumor and there has been none. The tumor shows signs of necrosis (darkening) which is a promising sign.

Other than the loss of hearing in the left ear (-90 dB, tumor already trashed that nerve) I have no other mental or physical impairments (that I can blame on the tumor ).