21–30 of 236 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
State of the art MRI machine costs $3 million up front. Would take 20 scans a week, every week, for 10 years to break even on that investment at $300 per scan. Not counting physician & staff time or cost of capital.
Yes but you don't do 20 scans a week, you do that per day
> preferred by patients and involving less exposure to radiation I thought MRIs didn't have any radiation exposure as opposed to X-Rays and CT scans; unsure about this benefit of less exposure to radiation from 1 whole-body MRI vs multiple MRIs (should be the same IMO)
... so they do targeted scans (with radiation risk) as their normal practice. That kind of makes sense, since the resolution of those scans is much better than WB-MRI.
Many doctors hate full body scans. Every individual has a handful of anomalies which are almost always benign. They show up on full body scans and chasing them down comes with cost and patient risk. I have a hard time with reporting like this that doesn't quantify cost of biopsy on false-positives as well as cost of complications from examining false-positives. Source: worked in clinical research for 2 years.
Wouldn't it be more useful as a baseline? Scan once and store it, then scan every few years and compare. If any of the "anomalies" has grown or new ones have appeared between scans, then they might be worth a second look?
Many doctors hate full body scans. Every individual has a handful of anomalies which are almost always benign. They show up on full body scans and chasing them down comes with cost and patient risk. I have a hard time with reporting like this that doesn't quantify cost of biopsy on false-positives as well as cost of complications from examining false-positives. Source: worked in clinical research for 2 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
State of the art MRI machine costs $3 million up front. Would take 20 scans a week, every week, for 10 years to break even on that investment at $300 per scan. Not counting physician & staff time or cost of capital.
Only 20 scans a week? A scan takes 30-60 minutes. So even if they only work 8 hour days and assume an hour for lunch/flex that's 35 scans per 5 day week. If they use it on weekends at all or run it for more than eight hours, that's just gravy. I'm not sure where you got the 20 scans a week number.
To try and pack it that densely, with the large variation in how people show up at the hospital, would cause bottlenecks and loss of service.
20 a week is a more common number for most places.
Here's actual data [1] measured on site. The usage is indeed around 50%, so the 20 is a much better answer.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/MRI-scanner-utilization-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
State of the art MRI machine costs $3 million up front. Would take 20 scans a week, every week, for 10 years to break even on that investment at $300 per scan. Not counting physician & staff time or cost of capital.
Only 20 scans a week? A scan takes 30-60 minutes. So even if they only work 8 hour days and assume an hour for lunch/flex that's 35 scans per 5 day week. If they use it on weekends at all or run it for more than eight hours, that's just gravy. I'm not sure where you got the 20 scans a week number.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only 20 scans a week? A scan takes 30-60 minutes. So even if they only work 8 hour days and assume an hour for lunch/flex that's 35 scans per 5 day week. If they use it on weekends at all or run it for more than eight hours, that's just gravy. I'm not sure where you got the 20 scans a week number.
Because scans are not booked wall to wall every hour of every day. Needs more likely follow a poisson distribution with ample waits in between uses. To try and pack it that densely, with the large variation in how people show up at the hospital, would cause bottlenecks and loss of service. 20 a week is a more common number for most places. Here's actual data [1] measured on site. The usage is indeed around 50%, so th…
(In the case of the study listed, the utilization figures might be out of ~35 hours, which would make things different - but they also exclude scans scheduled in advance)
Many doctors hate full body scans. Every individual has a handful of anomalies which are almost always benign. They show up on full body scans and chasing them down comes with cost and patient risk. I have a hard time with reporting like this that doesn't quantify cost of biopsy on false-positives as well as cost of complications from examining false-positives. Source: worked in clinical research for 2 years.
In our experience sometimes a new cancer site isn't diagnosed quickly, especially if it's asymptomatic and slow growing. Having past scans and reviewing them overtime has found multiple tumors so far.
Seems the radiographers err on the side of caution when feeding back to the Oncologist. Her last cancer in her neck (c2) had been tracked over 3 scans (because it was small and slow growing), before it was reported back to us and subsequently treated with cyberknife.