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Rebecca Smith-Bindman, professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, has spent much more than a decade looking for the disturbing risk that one of the most precious tools of modern medicine, computerized computed tomography, can sometimes cause cancer.

Smith-Bindman and his colleagues sharing the same ideas have long faced federal policies aimed at improving the safety of patients undergoing computed tomography. As part of new Medicare regulations in force this year, hospitals and imaging centers should start to collect and share more information on the radiation that their scanners emit.

According to IMV, a medical market study company that Track imaging. More than half of these scans are intended for people aged 60 and over. However, there is little regulation of radiation levels because the machines scan organs and structures inside the bodies. The dosages are erratic, varying considerably from one clinic to another, and are too often unnecessarily high, according to Smith-Bindman and other criticisms.

“It’s unfathomable,” said Smith-Bindman. “We continue to do more and more CTS, and the doses continue to increase.”

A computed tomography can expose a patient to 10 or 15 times more radiation than another, said Smith-Bindman. “There are very great variations,” she said, “and the doses vary from an order of magnitude – ten times, not 10% different – for patients seen for the same clinical problem.” In aberrant institutions, the variation is even higher, according to research, she and a team of international collaborators have published.

She and other researchers estimated in 2009 that high doses could be responsible for 2% of cancers. The current research shows that it is probably higher, because many more scans are carried out today.

The risk of Tomodensitograms cancer for any individual patient is very low, although it increases for patients who have many scans throughout their lives. Radiologists do not want to frighten patients who can benefit from imaging, which plays a crucial role in identifying potentially fatal conditions such as cancers and aneurysms and guides doctors through complicated procedures.

But the new rules for collecting centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published in the last months of the Biden administration aim to make imagery safer. They also require a more meticulous evaluation of the dosage, the quality and the need for computed tomography.

The requirements, deployed in January, are under failure in about three years For hospitals,, ambulatory parametersand doctors. As part of the complicated declaration system, all radiologists or health establishments are not necessary to comply immediately. Providers could be faced with financial penalties under Medicare if they do not comply, although they are also progressive from 2027.

When the Biden administration has published the new directives, a spokesperson for the CMS said in an email that exposure to excessive and unnecessary radiation was a health risk that could be treated as a measure and comments to hospitals and doctors. The agency at the time refused to make an official available for an interview. The Trump administration did not respond to a request for comments for this article.

The LeapFrog group, an organization following the security of hospitals, praised the new rules. “Exposure to radiation is a very serious patient safety problem, so we congratulate the CMS to focus on computed tomography,” said Leah Binder, president and chief executive officer. Leapfrog has stand up For pediatric exhibition For radiation imagery, “and we find significant variations between hospitals,” added Binder.

CMS passed a contract with the UCSF in 2019 to seek solutions aimed at encouraging a better measure and a better assessment of the CTS, leading to the development of the new approach of the agency.

The American College of Radiology and three other associations involved in medical imaging, however, Opposed to the CMS rules project When they were being revised, arguing in comments written in 2023 that they were excessively heavy, will burdens the providers and could add analyzes to the cost. The group was also concerned, at that time, that health providers should use a single owner technological tool for the collection of dosage and all related digitization data.

The only company in question, Alara Imaging, provides free software that radiologists and radiology programs must comply with new regulations. The promise to keep it free is included in copyright of the company. Smith-Bindman is co-founder of Alara Imaging, and UCSF also has a participation in the company, which develops other health technology products unrelated to the CMS imaging rule that it plans to market.

But the landscape has recently changed. ACR said in a press release from Judy Burleson, ACR vice-president for quality management programs, which CMS allows other suppliers-and that ACR itself is “in discussion with Alara” on data collection and submission. In addition, a company called MEDISOLV, which works on the quality of health care, said that at least one client works with another supplier, Imalogix, on CT dose data.

Several dozen quality organizations and health safety organizations – including certain national patient safety leaders, such as the Institute for the Improvement of Health Care – have supported CMS efforts.

The concerns about the dosage of CT are long. A historical study Posted in Jama Internal Medicine in 2009 By a research team which included experts from the National Cancer Institute, the Veterans Department, and universities estimated that computed tomography was responsible for 29,000 cases of excess cancer per year in the United States, around 2% of all cases diagnosed each year.

But the number of computed tomography continued to climb. By 2016, It was estimated at 74 millionRaised by 20% in a decade, although radiologists say that the doses of radiation per scan have decreased. Some researchers have noted that American doctors order much more imaging than doctors in other developed countries, which argues that some are useless and dangerous.

More recent studies, some examining pediatric patients and some relying on exposure to radiation exposure of survivors of atomic bombs attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, have also identified the risk of computed tomography.

The elderly can deal with greater risks of cancer due to the imagery they had earlier in life. And scientists have stressed the need to be particularly cautious with children, who can be more vulnerable to exposure to radiation while being young and face the consequences of cumulative exposure as they age.

Max Wentmark, neuroradiologist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which was involved in the work of the field on the appropriate use of imaging, said doctors generally follow dosage protocols for computed tomography. In addition, technology improves; It expects artificial intelligence to soon help doctors determine the use and optimal imagery dosage, offering “the minimum quantity of radiation doses to bring us to the diagnosis that we are trying to achieve”.

But he said he is hosting new CMS regulations.

“I think measures will help speed up the transition to ever lower and lower doses,” he said. “They are useful.”

Rebecca Smith-Bindman, professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, has spent much more than a decade looking for the disturbing risk that one of the most precious tools of modern medicine, computerized computed tomography, can sometimes cause cancer.

Smith-Bindman and his colleagues sharing the same ideas have long faced federal policies aimed at improving the safety of patients undergoing computed tomography. As part of new Medicare regulations in force this year, hospitals and imaging centers should start to collect and share more information on the radiation that their scanners emit.

According to IMV, a medical market study company that Track imaging. More than half of these scans are intended for people aged 60 and over. However, there is little regulation of radiation levels because the machines scan organs and structures inside the bodies. The dosages are erratic, varying considerably from one clinic to another, and are too often unnecessarily high, according to Smith-Bindman and other criticisms.

“It’s unfathomable,” said Smith-Bindman. “We continue to do more and more CTS, and the doses continue to increase.”

A computed tomography can expose a patient to 10 or 15 times more radiation than another, said Smith-Bindman. “There are very great variations,” she said, “and the doses vary from an order of magnitude – ten times, not 10% different – for patients seen for the same clinical problem.” In aberrant institutions, the variation is even higher, according to research, she and a team of international collaborators have published.

She and other researchers estimated in 2009 that high doses could be responsible for 2% of cancers. The current research shows that it is probably higher, because many more scans are carried out today.

The risk of Tomodensitograms cancer for any individual patient is very low, although it increases for patients who have many scans throughout their lives. Radiologists do not want to frighten patients who can benefit from imaging, which plays a crucial role in identifying potentially fatal conditions such as cancers and aneurysms and guides doctors through complicated procedures.

But the new rules for collecting centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published in the last months of the Biden administration aim to make imagery safer. They also require a more meticulous evaluation of the dosage, the quality and the need for computed tomography.

The requirements, deployed in January, are under failure in about three years For hospitals,, ambulatory parametersand doctors. As part of the complicated declaration system, all radiologists or health establishments are not necessary to comply immediately. Providers could be faced with financial penalties under Medicare if they do not comply, although they are also progressive from 2027.

When the Biden administration has published the new directives, a spokesperson for the CMS said in an email that exposure to excessive and unnecessary radiation was a health risk that could be treated as a measure and comments to hospitals and doctors. The agency at the time refused to make an official available for an interview. The Trump administration did not respond to a request for comments for this article.

The LeapFrog group, an organization following the security of hospitals, praised the new rules. “Exposure to radiation is a very serious patient safety problem, so we congratulate the CMS to focus on computed tomography,” said Leah Binder, president and chief executive officer. Leapfrog has stand up For pediatric exhibition For radiation imagery, “and we find significant variations between hospitals,” added Binder.

CMS passed a contract with the UCSF in 2019 to seek solutions aimed at encouraging a better measure and a better assessment of the CTS, leading to the development of the new approach of the agency.

The American College of Radiology and three other associations involved in medical imaging, however, Opposed to the CMS rules project When they were being revised, arguing in comments written in 2023 that they were excessively heavy, will burdens the providers and could add analyzes to the cost. The group was also concerned, at that time, that health providers should use a single owner technological tool for the collection of dosage and all related digitization data.

The only company in question, Alara Imaging, provides free software that radiologists and radiology programs must comply with new regulations. The promise to keep it free is included in copyright of the company. Smith-Bindman is co-founder of Alara Imaging, and UCSF also has a participation in the company, which develops other health technology products unrelated to the CMS imaging rule that it plans to market.

But the landscape has recently changed. ACR said in a press release from Judy Burleson, ACR vice-president for quality management programs, which CMS allows other suppliers-and that ACR itself is “in discussion with Alara” on data collection and submission. In addition, a company called MEDISOLV, which works on the quality of health care, said that at least one client works with another supplier, Imalogix, on CT dose data.

Several dozen quality organizations and health safety organizations – including certain national patient safety leaders, such as the Institute for the Improvement of Health Care – have supported CMS efforts.

The concerns about the dosage of CT are long. A historical study Posted in Jama Internal Medicine in 2009 By a research team which included experts from the National Cancer Institute, the Veterans Department, and universities estimated that computed tomography was responsible for 29,000 cases of excess cancer per year in the United States, around 2% of all cases diagnosed each year.

But the number of computed tomography continued to climb. By 2016, It was estimated at 74 millionRaised by 20% in a decade, although radiologists say that the doses of radiation per scan have decreased. Some researchers have noted that American doctors order much more imaging than doctors in other developed countries, which argues that some are useless and dangerous.

More recent studies, some examining pediatric patients and some relying on exposure to radiation exposure of survivors of atomic bombs attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, have also identified the risk of computed tomography.

The elderly can deal with greater risks of cancer due to the imagery they had earlier in life. And scientists have stressed the need to be particularly cautious with children, who can be more vulnerable to exposure to radiation while being young and face the consequences of cumulative exposure as they age.

Max Wentmark, neuroradiologist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which was involved in the work of the field on the appropriate use of imaging, said doctors generally follow dosage protocols for computed tomography. In addition, technology improves; It expects artificial intelligence to soon help doctors determine the use and optimal imagery dosage, offering “the minimum quantity of radiation doses to bring us to the diagnosis that we are trying to achieve”.

But he said he is hosting new CMS regulations.

“I think measures will help speed up the transition to ever lower and lower doses,” he said. “They are useful.”

Rebecca Smith-Bindman, professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, has spent much more than a decade looking for the disturbing risk that one of the most precious tools of modern medicine, computerized computed tomography, can sometimes cause cancer.

Smith-Bindman and his colleagues sharing the same ideas have long faced federal policies aimed at improving the safety of patients undergoing computed tomography. As part of new Medicare regulations in force this year, hospitals and imaging centers should start to collect and share more information on the radiation that their scanners emit.

According to IMV, a medical market study company that Track imaging. More than half of these scans are intended for people aged 60 and over. However, there is little regulation of radiation levels because the machines scan organs and structures inside the bodies. The dosages are erratic, varying considerably from one clinic to another, and are too often unnecessarily high, according to Smith-Bindman and other criticisms.

“It’s unfathomable,” said Smith-Bindman. “We continue to do more and more CTS, and the doses continue to increase.”

A computed tomography can expose a patient to 10 or 15 times more radiation than another, said Smith-Bindman. “There are very great variations,” she said, “and the doses vary from an order of magnitude – ten times, not 10% different – for patients seen for the same clinical problem.” In aberrant institutions, the variation is even higher, according to research, she and a team of international collaborators have published.

She and other researchers estimated in 2009 that high doses could be responsible for 2% of cancers. The current research shows that it is probably higher, because many more scans are carried out today.

The risk of Tomodensitograms cancer for any individual patient is very low, although it increases for patients who have many scans throughout their lives. Radiologists do not want to frighten patients who can benefit from imaging, which plays a crucial role in identifying potentially fatal conditions such as cancers and aneurysms and guides doctors through complicated procedures.

But the new rules for collecting centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published in the last months of the Biden administration aim to make imagery safer. They also require a more meticulous evaluation of the dosage, the quality and the need for computed tomography.

The requirements, deployed in January, are under failure in about three years For hospitals,, ambulatory parametersand doctors. As part of the complicated declaration system, all radiologists or health establishments are not necessary to comply immediately. Providers could be faced with financial penalties under Medicare if they do not comply, although they are also progressive from 2027.

When the Biden administration has published the new directives, a spokesperson for the CMS said in an email that exposure to excessive and unnecessary radiation was a health risk that could be treated as a measure and comments to hospitals and doctors. The agency at the time refused to make an official available for an interview. The Trump administration did not respond to a request for comments for this article.

The LeapFrog group, an organization following the security of hospitals, praised the new rules. “Exposure to radiation is a very serious patient safety problem, so we congratulate the CMS to focus on computed tomography,” said Leah Binder, president and chief executive officer. Leapfrog has stand up For pediatric exhibition For radiation imagery, “and we find significant variations between hospitals,” added Binder.

CMS passed a contract with the UCSF in 2019 to seek solutions aimed at encouraging a better measure and a better assessment of the CTS, leading to the development of the new approach of the agency.

The American College of Radiology and three other associations involved in medical imaging, however, Opposed to the CMS rules project When they were being revised, arguing in comments written in 2023 that they were excessively heavy, will burdens the providers and could add analyzes to the cost. The group was also concerned, at that time, that health providers should use a single owner technological tool for the collection of dosage and all related digitization data.

The only company in question, Alara Imaging, provides free software that radiologists and radiology programs must comply with new regulations. The promise to keep it free is included in copyright of the company. Smith-Bindman is co-founder of Alara Imaging, and UCSF also has a participation in the company, which develops other health technology products unrelated to the CMS imaging rule that it plans to market.

But the landscape has recently changed. ACR said in a press release from Judy Burleson, ACR vice-president for quality management programs, which CMS allows other suppliers-and that ACR itself is “in discussion with Alara” on data collection and submission. In addition, a company called MEDISOLV, which works on the quality of health care, said that at least one client works with another supplier, Imalogix, on CT dose data.

Several dozen quality organizations and health safety organizations – including certain national patient safety leaders, such as the Institute for the Improvement of Health Care – have supported CMS efforts.

The concerns about the dosage of CT are long. A historical study Posted in Jama Internal Medicine in 2009 By a research team which included experts from the National Cancer Institute, the Veterans Department, and universities estimated that computed tomography was responsible for 29,000 cases of excess cancer per year in the United States, around 2% of all cases diagnosed each year.

But the number of computed tomography continued to climb. By 2016, It was estimated at 74 millionRaised by 20% in a decade, although radiologists say that the doses of radiation per scan have decreased. Some researchers have noted that American doctors order much more imaging than doctors in other developed countries, which argues that some are useless and dangerous.

More recent studies, some examining pediatric patients and some relying on exposure to radiation exposure of survivors of atomic bombs attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, have also identified the risk of computed tomography.

The elderly can deal with greater risks of cancer due to the imagery they had earlier in life. And scientists have stressed the need to be particularly cautious with children, who can be more vulnerable to exposure to radiation while being young and face the consequences of cumulative exposure as they age.

Max Wentmark, neuroradiologist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which was involved in the work of the field on the appropriate use of imaging, said doctors generally follow dosage protocols for computed tomography. In addition, technology improves; It expects artificial intelligence to soon help doctors determine the use and optimal imagery dosage, offering “the minimum quantity of radiation doses to bring us to the diagnosis that we are trying to achieve”.

But he said he is hosting new CMS regulations.

“I think measures will help speed up the transition to ever lower and lower doses,” he said. “They are useful.”