Next time your doctor orders a scan, know the benefits but don’t forget to ask about the harm | Ranjana Srivastava

‘Incidentalomas’ – purely incidental findings – arise in up to a third of all tests. Patients can end up with unnecessary and harmful interventions

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“And one more thing, what do you want to do about this?”

The trainee looks so apologetic that I suspect a medical error relating to our octogenarian patient admitted overnight with confusion. Scrolling through the images on the computer, I see the problem, even without the arrows pointing to an “ill-defined abnormality” around the colon.

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