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Comment by xeornet | Hacker News Reader

Well actually let’s find out whether they do cause it or not. Patients ought to know the risks beforehand if so. The calculation as to net benefit can be done later.

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X-ray radiation causes cancer.

CT scanners don’t use magic non-carcinogenic x-rays.

Socrates is a man, men are mortal, Socrates is mortal.

We have the technology. We should have moved on to MRIs for nearly all scans years ago.

I mean you can't when a non-insignificant amount of people have magnetic metal in their body.

Please elaborate?

They're not interchangeable. CT scans have better resolution, take significantly less time, and are generally sensitive to different things.

You’re absolutely right, they’re not interchangeable. MRIs are better suited for soft tissues.

If you’re looking for a broken bone, take a single x-ray image instead of a whole CT scan, which is a far higher dose of X-ray radiation.

Largely agree, but still very much depends on what you're screening for. For example, my oncologist still recommends CT over MRI for post-surgical screening as the increased resolution makes it possible to detect tumors a bit earlier.

I’m not familiar with the parameters of the machines readily available to your provider, but I can say that the risk/reward scenario for an intervention for someone coming out of cancer surgery is distinct. We give cancer patients chemo and radiation that we would never give to someone who just showed up in the ER or was still undergoing preliminary diagnostics.

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