Hospitals overuse double CT scans -- report

WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- Hundreds of hospitals are routinely using double CT scans, overexposing patients to radiation in a procedure that should be used rarely, medical experts say.

A double CT scan involves back-to-back scans, one without dye and then one with dye injected into the veins. Nearly one in six hospitals in Virginia perform the procedure remarkably often, driving up costs and subjecting patients to double doses of radiation, The Washington Post reported Saturday in a review of government Medicare data from 2008.

"Just making the information public is a fairly strong incentive" for hospitals to examine the rates at which the procedures are prescribed, Dr. Michael Rapp, director of quality measurement at the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, told the Post.

In 2008, hospitals performed double scans on 5.4 percent of Medicare patients who received chest CTs in emergency rooms or radiology units, totaling 76,781 patients, the newspaper said.

"This is one of thousands of things we do every day in healthcare that cause more harm than good," Rosemary Gibson, co-author of "The Treatment Trap" and editor of a series of articles on overtreatment in the Archives of Internal Medicine, told the Post.

Experts say nearly all chest problems can be sufficiently diagnosed with one scan, but some physicians insist they get the most information possible from a double scan.