Americans are Getting Too Fat for X-rays

Filed in archive Diagnostics , Studies on July 31, 2006

I don't know why the news should surprise anyone, especially since approximately 64 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese, but it seems that many Americans are too fat to get optimal medical care. According to radiologists, some overweight or obese patients either can't fit into scanners or their fat is too dense for x-rays and soundwaves to penetrate, making it much harder for doctors to be able to get accurate test results.

Radiologists have even come up with lingo to describe when images are inconclusive because of a patient's obesity "body habitus". Dr. Raul Uppot, a radiologist based at massachusetts general hospital, and his colleagues looked for the term "body habitus" in radiology reports from 1989 to 2003. They examined regular x-rays, CT scans, MRIs, and PET scans and found that 7,778 out of 5,253,014 or .15 percent of the reports were habitus limited. The research group looked even more closely at radiology reports from 200 patients, who weighed on average 239 pounds. Uppot and his colleagues published their findings in Radiology.

Evidently, ultrasounds are most affected by body habitus. It's hard for soundwaves to get to an obese person's organs. The end result is that the test looks like a snowy picture on a television set. MRIs offer good results as long as the obese patient is able to fit in the tube. Some manufacturers have started to make the machines bigger to accommodate obese and claustrophobic patients, but the larger machines are so expensive that purchasing them is out of reach for many hospitals.

This problem affects more than the physicians who have a hard time getting accurate test results. Imagine being very ill, needing sophisticated and expensive tests, only to be told that you're too fat to have imaging done. It's not exactly uplifting news. It also affects the public. When hospitals have to spend more money to buy special equipment for obese patients, everybody ends up paying in the form of higher healthcare costs.

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