Excerpt: Medical advances such as CT scans that offer doctors highly detailed images of the body's inner workings are overused, increasing costs and patients' exposure to radiation, according to a new study. The provocative conclusion by a University of California-San Francisco research team challenges the more-is-better conventional wisdom of many consumers and their doctors. The use of innovative imaging tests like computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) nearly doubled over the past decade, rising from 260 to 478 tests per thousand patients, according to research .... The average annual imaging cost per patient also doubled, from $229 to $443, the team found.

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