You're Too FAT!
Reuters has a three page article today on a crisis of obesity rendering x-rays and other medical imaging systems useless. The basis for this revelation is a search of radiology reports using the phrase, "...These images are limited due to body habitus." Translation: This person is so fat that Superman can't see inside.
The story goes on to describe how patients are sometimes too rotund to fit into an MRI machine. Have they tried Duralube? The infomercial that I saw said that it has the lowest coefficient of drag of any lubricant. Maybe they could stick the patient in a big bag and use a vacuum to suck out the air and compress their bodies like that thingy that can shrink a king size comforter into a bag the size of a dinner napkin.
A closer study of 200 of the records showed that the average patient was 239 lbs. That's 17.071 stones for our UK brethren. That doesn't seem like very much to me. Are the openings on these machines the size of a Jimmy Dean sausage? I suppose that height has an impact. I mean that if mini-me weighed 239 pounds he might be fairly round. But I bet he would still fit in the machines.
I read the article closer and saw that 0.15 percent of the over 5 million reports that were studied contained the 'you're a fat slob' excuse. Was this a typo? surely to rise to crisis status they meant 15 percent. Or at least .15 of all reports. But no, the number was right. Just over one tenth of one percent of the reports had the 'you need Jenny Craig' line.
Why is this a crisis? The report stated that the number of times the statement was found has doubled in the last few years. Could this be because more technicians are becoming familiar with it and using it more often? Or maybe it's because the technicians are too lazy fix their errors so they blame it on the patient's weight. Is this a conspiracy of the diet companies to get you to buy their products? I don't know. I'm going to have an ice cream cone and try to figure it out.
The story goes on to describe how patients are sometimes too rotund to fit into an MRI machine. Have they tried Duralube? The infomercial that I saw said that it has the lowest coefficient of drag of any lubricant. Maybe they could stick the patient in a big bag and use a vacuum to suck out the air and compress their bodies like that thingy that can shrink a king size comforter into a bag the size of a dinner napkin.
A closer study of 200 of the records showed that the average patient was 239 lbs. That's 17.071 stones for our UK brethren. That doesn't seem like very much to me. Are the openings on these machines the size of a Jimmy Dean sausage? I suppose that height has an impact. I mean that if mini-me weighed 239 pounds he might be fairly round. But I bet he would still fit in the machines.
I read the article closer and saw that 0.15 percent of the over 5 million reports that were studied contained the 'you're a fat slob' excuse. Was this a typo? surely to rise to crisis status they meant 15 percent. Or at least .15 of all reports. But no, the number was right. Just over one tenth of one percent of the reports had the 'you need Jenny Craig' line.
Why is this a crisis? The report stated that the number of times the statement was found has doubled in the last few years. Could this be because more technicians are becoming familiar with it and using it more often? Or maybe it's because the technicians are too lazy fix their errors so they blame it on the patient's weight. Is this a conspiracy of the diet companies to get you to buy their products? I don't know. I'm going to have an ice cream cone and try to figure it out.
Labels: Fun Stuff
posted by Moneyman at 7:29 AM
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