Dear AuntMinnie Member,
The power of CT coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring is on display again this week with the publication of new data highlighting the technique's ability to predict patient mortality.
A multicenter group tracked almost 10,000 subjects for nearly 15 years, starting with their baseline coronary calcium CT scans, and then correlating the number who died with their CAC scores. The researchers discovered a surprisingly strong relationship between CAC score and mortality, with individuals with the highest scores having a more than sixfold greater chance of dying.
When coupled with age (other patient variables trailed in significance), CAC score could give physicians a very strong tool to predict patient mortality. And it could potentially serve as a patient aid, motivating people to adopt healthier lifestyles and start medical therapy.
Learn more by clicking here, or visit our CT Community at ct.auntminnie.com.
New mammo controversy
If it's a new month, it must be time for a new controversy regarding screening mammography.
This time, mammography skeptic Dr. Gilbert Welch is back with a new study that questions whether population-wide breast screening does any good at all. Welch and several co-authors published a study in JAMA Internal Medicine on July 6 that concludes that the main product of population-wide screening is overdiagnosis.
Welch and his team followed the outcomes of 16 million women in the U.S. who were screened with mammography in 2000, tracking them over the next 10 years. They calculated breast cancer incidence and breast cancer mortality rates, and then compared these with screening compliance rates on a county-by-county basis.
While higher screening rates correlated with more diagnoses of breast cancer, mortality rates remained the same, according to the researchers. This is a classic indicator of overdiagnosis, or women being treated for disease that would never represent a health threat, they wrote.
But the study is already drawing challenges, including a critique from Dr. Daniel Kopans. He pointed out that the findings fly in the face of a documented 27% decline in breast cancer deaths from 2000 to 2010 -- a decline cited in Welch's previous paper that was critical of mammography.
Read more about the study by clicking here, or visit our Women's Imaging Community at women.auntminnie.com.
MICI Q3 numbers
Finally, recently released numbers for the third quarter from the Medical Imaging Confidence Index (MICI) indicate that radiology administrators still show guarded optimism regarding their future business prospects. All five MICI categories remain far above the low the index hit in 2014, and the index's composite score is also showing growth. Learn more by clicking here.
