Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Is the job market for radiologists heating up again in the U.S.? That's the tantalizing implication of a new survey on physician recruiting released this week by executive search firm Merritt Hawkins.
The firm reported that it received twice as many search requests from its clients for radiologists in the past year compared to the year before. And the most recent figure is nearly four times the number of requests Merritt Hawkins received at the nadir of the radiologist job market, from 2013 to 2014. The growth was enough to put radiology back in the top 10 among physician specialties for the first time since 2007.
The question now is whether radiology's recovery is sustainable. The firm hints that it might be, given that half of U.S. radiologists are nearing retirement age, and imaging has such a central role in the modern healthcare system. Read more by clicking here, or visit our Imaging Leaders Community at leaders.auntminnie.com.
NEJM mammo paper stirs controversy
Debate over the value of screening mammography is once again in the headlines with the publication of a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that questions whether detecting cancers at an early stage is really worthwhile.
Authors of the paper used a statistical model to assess what percentage of small breast cancers would eventually pose a health risk to patients. They eventually concluded that many small cancers being detected would not have progressed to being larger cancers -- and thus offer evidence that screening is leading to overdiagnosis.
The problem with the new study is that it's heavily based on a 2012 paper by Bleyer and Welch that claimed that 22% of breast cancers detected would never pose a risk to women. That estimate, also based on statistical models, has been heavily criticized as being too high by advocates for mammography.
So the controversy over breast screening continues. Read about the new paper by clicking here, or visit our Women's Imaging Community at women.auntminnie.com.
More news from ISCT
Finally, the annual meeting of the International Society for Computed Tomography (ISCT) wrapped up yesterday in San Francisco, and we're pleased to bring you coverage in our CT Community. You'll find this article on understanding and maximizing CT in the healthcare value chain, as well as this story on automated abdominal CT analysis. Be sure to check back in the community at ct.auntminnie.com for more follow-up coverage from this meeting.
