Dear AuntMinnie Member,
A radiologist who was the former chief of radiology for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in Pittsburgh is shaking up the system with charges that she is the victim of whistleblower retaliation.
Anna Chacko, MD, claims that her attempts to reform the Pittsburgh VA's operations were met with retaliation from the VA administration, eventually leading to her ouster from the job earlier this year. She said the retaliation included the leak of confidential personnel information to a blogger who publicized salacious stories about her personal life on the Internet -- stories she claims are false.
Dr. Chacko's charges have won the attention of several lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who are investigating broader allegations of retaliation against whistleblower physicians within the VA system. Learn more about this story by clicking here.
FDA shuts down PET lab
In other news, a PET research lab at Columbia University has been temporarily closed after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration raised concerns over the way the facility was manufacturing PET radiopharmaceuticals.
The agency has charged the lab with failing to correct deficiencies in PET radiotracer manufacturing that were raised in a warning letter more than two years ago, and even with allegedly falsifying documents in an effort to hide impurities in PET drugs.
Get the rest of the story by clicking here.
SCCT and AAPM reports
We're also featuring articles from two conferences under way this week, the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) in Las Vegas and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) in Philadelphia.
In an SCCT study, researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina found that measurement of noncalcified plaque can differ significantly depending on the type of software used. The findings could have important implications as our understanding grows of the relationship between soft plaque and future cardiac events.
In an AAPM presentation, researchers from the University of California, Irvine describe how different new breast imaging modalities -- breast MRI, conebeam CT, and dual-energy mammography -- can be used to quantify breast density. Read the story by clicking here.
Check back with AuntMinnie.com later in the week for more coverage from these two meetings.
