GE Is Worried About Radiation?

Fellow blogger Doctor Dalai has a recent post about SPECT/CT scanners. It seems that General Electric is trying to get him to buy a machine that doesn't do as good a job of scanning, in his opinion, but they are pushing it as the scanner with the lowest dose to the patient:

The following link is to an article regarding the possible link between multiple CTs and cancer risks, especially in children. Aiding us in our cause for our low-dose SPECT/CT Infinia Hawkeye 4 system. Maximum patient dose with the Infinia Hawkeye 4 is 2.5ma. Why more dose for Attenuation Correction and Anatomical Mapping in Nuclear Medicine environment?

I had to laugh when I read this. You might remember my post about GE promoting the sale of scanners to self-referrers from last year. GE has an entire web-page devoted to the joys of owning your own scanners, and how GE will help you get one. My favorite quote from their site is:

In-office CT also provides a highly credible and effective means of differentiating your practice from others in your market. It places you on the leading edge of patient care and may engender positive word-of-mouth that has the potential to increase your revenue opportunities significantly.

So, if you are "increasing your revenue opportunities significantly", you are scanning a lot of patients. Let's be real and admit that some significant proportion of those patients maybe didn't need to be scanned. Thus, GE is proposing irradiating patients for profit. That doesn't quite mesh with their great concern over the increased dose someone would get if scanned on another company's SPECT/CT. But I guess that doesn't matter, does it?

I just love it when people bend and use the facts to their own advantage.