More imaging can mean more 'incidentalomas,' treatment for often-benign findings
Advanced imaging tests may be providing as much diagnostic relief as patient anxiety, Reuters Health report. A new research review in the BMJ suggests increasing high resolution imaging scans are contributing to more accidentally discovered abnormalities, "or incidentalomas,” that are unrelated to a patient's diagnosis and can often be benign.
“We know that the diagnosis of incidentalomas can cause patient anxiety and is likely to lead to further investigations and treatment, some of which will be unnecessary, and some of which will cause harm,” said lead study author Jack O’Sullivan, MD, a clinical researcher at the University of Oxford, said in an article published July 12 by Reuters Health.
O'Sullivan and colleagues detailed how the prevalence of incidentalomas in a population of 627,000 patients greatly varied depending on the type of imaging and what location of the body was scanned, such as the heart, ovaries, breasts or prostate, as well as the chance of the abnormalities turning out to be cancerous.
“It is well known that continuous improvements in different radiologic imaging techniques that have happened over the last 10 years now also show smaller and smaller structures in our bodies that in a majority of cases are harmless," Camilla Schalin-Jantti, MD, PhD, an endocrinologist at Helsinki University Hospital in Finland, told Reuters—and emphasized that incidentalomas are becoming more common as more patients are getting adnominal, chest, head and brain CTs in the emergency department.
“In the emergency setting, CT scans are very useful in the diagnostic workup of patients suffering from acute severe symptoms,” Schalin-Jantti said. “But they should not be used as a health check in persons having no symptoms, and we should avoid unnecessary imaging in order to reduce exposure to radiation, especially in young people.”
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A recent graduate from Dominican University (IL) with a bachelor’s in journalism, Melissa joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering all aspects of health imaging. She’s a fan of singing and playing guitar, elephants, a good cup of tea, and her golden retriever Cooper.