Dear AuntMinnie Member,
The Joint Commission is one of the most respected -- some might even say feared -- accreditation and certification bodies in the U.S. So when the organization issued an alert yesterday on the risks of medical radiation, many imaging facilities sat up and took notice.
In issuing its sentinel alert on August 24, the Joint Commission raised concern over the fact that physicians in the U.S. are able to order imaging exams on patients without any knowledge of their past history of exposure to medical radiation. The organization also pointed to recent studies indicating that radiation-based imaging might be overused in some sensitive patient populations, such as children and pregnant women.
The Joint Commission made a series of recommendations to reduce exposure to medical radiation. But a bigger question remains: What procedures will the organization require when it and two other bodies begin accrediting U.S. imaging facilities in January 2012, as specified in the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA) of 2008?
Read more about the alert in a story by international editor Eric Barnes, which you can read by clicking here.
MRI and PET for Alzheimer's
In other news, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, used a combination of MR spectroscopy and PET with the Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) radiopharmaceutical to find what could be early signs of Alzheimer's disease in people who are otherwise cognitively normal.
Together the modalities detected amyloid-beta deposits, which are typically found in patients with Alzheimer's. What's more, patients with high amyloid-beta levels also had high levels of brain metabolites such as choline, which reduce cognitive skills. Read more by clicking here.
In other MRI news, read about a new dynamic contrast-enhanced protocol called shutter-speed MRI that could offer improved breast cancer diagnostic performance compared with standard breast MRI. Researchers from Oregon found that the technique can slow the movement of water molecules in the breast to provide better lesion visualization. Get more details by clicking here.
Get these stories and more news about MRI in our MRI Digital Community, at mri.auntminnie.com.
