Scans - more sensitive and easily available than ever - are increasingly finding abnormalities that may not be the cause of the problem for which they are blamed. It's an issue particularly for the millions of people who go to doctors' offices in pain.
Many doctors own scanners, which provide an incentive to offer to scans to their patients. And so, in what is often an irresistible feedback loop, patients who are in pain often demands scans hoping to find out what is wrong, doctors are tempted to offer scans to those patients, it is common for doctors and patients to assume that any abnormalities found are the reason for the pain.
But in many cases, it is just not known whether what is seen on a scan is the cause of the pain. The problem is that all too often, no one knows what is normal because we see something in scan and we assume causation without any idea of how common the abnormality in the population is.
Today, with more scans for everything from headaches to foot aches, more are left in medical lurch, or with unnecessary or sometimes even harmful treatments, including surgery.
