Repost Sunday: Help, I'm Stuck In The MRI Machine

I rerun some of my older posts on Sundays as a way to highlight stories that you may have missed. Just think of it as 'thought recycling' and a day off. This was originally posted July 26, 2006.

There is a new report out I saw courtesy of Reuters that says an increasing percentage of Americans do not X-Ray well. I suppose this is similar to not photographing well? It is well documented that we Americans are getting fatter. This trend has caught up with the medical imaging community. What I’m beating around the bush about is that Americans are becoming too fat to X-Ray.

Yep, not only has America gained weight to the point that we need extra medical attention every year, we can now no longer get the valuable imaging we need to identify if we have the problems brought on by the obesity in the first place! As we become thicker, it gets more difficult to penetrate our bodies for an image. Some folks also no longer fit into the CT or MRI tubes. The X-Ray crisis (my label only, it’s not official) includes traditional X-Rays, CT Scans, MRIs and even ultrasounds.

I bet this puts doctors and medical imagers in a pretty awkward position. Can you imagine having to tell a sick patient during an ultrasound that all you see is comparable to not getting reception on a television? How about having to call for backup when a patient becomes lodged in the CT tube? I can hear it now: “If I could just budge it another inch, we’d be able to see the spleen!”

Of course this is America and we are a capitalistic society. Companies are already beginning to manufacture and market larger imaging systems, which is quite a relief. As I get older and my metabolism slows way down, I know I can have my medical imaging done courtesy of the current best selling system, The Ultra Ultrasound 5.0.