What are the Pros and Cons of a CT Body Scan?

Pros of a CT Body Scan

CT body scans are very useful in helping doctors and radiologists:

• Detect a suspected disease or medical condition
• Detect trauma
• Determine the extent of a disease, trauma or other medical condition
• Determine the location of a disease, trauma or other medical condition
• Rule out disease, trauma or other medical condition in patients exhibiting symptoms
• Plan surgery or other medical treatment for an existing disease, trauma or other medical condition
• Monitor the effects of surgery or other medical treatment for an existing disease, trauma or other medical condition

However, many health care professionals, including the American College of Radiologists and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommend CT body scans only in cases where a patient is exhibiting signs and/or symptoms of disease, trauma or other medical conditions. They may also recommend it in situations where a person is known to have a medical condition that may have spread, where a person is undergoing or about to undergo medical treatment, or where a patient has suffered an injury that may have caused internal damage. Most doctors do not recommend a CT body scan as a tool to screen for disease, trauma or medical conditions in seemingly healthy individuals showing no signs or symptoms of any medical condition.

The CT Body Scan has not yet shown any advantages over more localized CT scans. Most health care professionals, especially experts at the American College of Radiology, do not recommend CT body scans as a tool for uncovering disease. Abnormal results in a CT body scan do not automatically indicate a serious, widespread health problem, and the results would require additional (extensive and expensive) testing anyway.

Some patients view CT body scans as a “peace of mind” procedure that can tell you for sure if you do or do not have any kind of medical condition that should be under control. According to this philosophy, a CT body scan could potentially be a useful screening tool, similar to mammography to screen for breast cancer, pap smear to screen for cervical cancer, colonoscopy to test for colon cancer, blood pressure tests to check for hypertension and blood sugar screenings to check for diabetes.

However, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has looked at current CT procedures and has determined that a CT body scan is, at this time, not a useful preventative health care measure. Firstly, the above-mentioned screening tests are generally performed on at-risk populations (for examples, colonoscopies are conducted regularly in patients over 50, as the risk for colon cancer increases after this age).

Secondly, many screening tests do pose some risks, and should only be undergone in situations where the pros outweigh the cons. A common concern among patients undergoing CT scans is the exposure to radiation a patient inevitably experiences during the CT procedure. In cases where the patient is suspected of having an illness, disease or trauma—cancer or a brain aneurysm, for example—the radiation risks of the CT scan are far outweighed by the benefits of discovering and treating a disease in its early, treatable stages. However, in cases where there is nothing apparently wrong with a patient, it makes little sense to expose the patient to radiation only to discover that nothing is wrong.

When a patient undergoes a CT body scan, he or she exposes himself to radiation and all the risks involved in it. The amount of radiation exposure in a CT body scan is up to several hundred times that of a regular x-ray. This radiation exposure can actually increase your chances of getting cancer and other diseases. This is, obviously, a risk worth taking in patients who are suspected to already have cancer; however, the risk is senseless in an otherwise healthy individual. Furthermore, if large segments of healthy people begin exposing themselves to radiation from CT body scan, the health of the population as a whole would suffer, especially if the CT body scan became a regular screening tool and people underwent such a scan at regular intervals throughout their lives.

Tests such as mammography and pap smears have been found more effective than CT body scans in detecting breast and cervical cancer. Meanwhile, other conditions that can be potentially life-threatening over time, such as hypertension and diabetes, cannot be detected with a CT body scan at all. Thus, a CT body scan does not provide the “whole picture” of what is occurring in your body. It is much more productive to conduct CT scans with the aim of uncovering specific problems in a specific area of the body.