Results from a research study led by Cooper Emergency Medicine physician Brigitte Baumann, MD, received national media coverage this week. The study, which was published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, looked at patient perceptions of CT scans and their cancer risk.
Dr. Baumann and her fellow researchers concluded that patients are more confident when CT imaging is part of their medical evaluation, but have a poor understanding the risk of the radiation exposure and underestimate their previous imaging experience. Dr. Baumann said she now spends more time explaining the risks and benefits of CT scans to patients.
“The point of the paper was not to create mass hysteria,” Dr. Bauman told a Reuters news reporter. “The concern is about patients who see multiple physicians or who present to different emergency departments for the same complaint and get a lot of scans. But the person who comes in with chest pain coughing up blood– a possible sign of a blood clot in the lungs, a CT scan might save that person’s life.”
The articles on the study results were published in newspapers and heard on radio stations across the country and in Europe.