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November 8, 2007 -- 11:14 EST

Headline Writers Play "Telephone"
I've tagged these in past columns as "Dreadlines" -- an over-amplification of a news item (i.e. a distortion, as in old school "Heavy Metal"). But when you add misinformed medical reporting to the "anything for a thrill" MO of the headline writers at Fox News, you get things like this:

Super X-Ray Drawing Controversy for
Super-Dose of Radiation

It's the game of "Telephone" -- you whisper a message in the next person's ear and by the end of the line...well, you get the idea.

That's exactly what happened to the study which I discussed in Tuesday's post. The CorE 64 trial, presented at the AHA this week, proved the extremely high accuracy of Multislice CT in ruling out coronary artery disease. To be sexy, AP dubbed it a "Super X-Ray". But in the story was a completely inaccurate line that the CT radiation dose was 10 times higher than a standard angiogram. I disputed this in my post, and yesterday an expert in the field, Dr. Michael Poon, President of the Society for Cardiovascular CT, confirmed to me that major studies have shown the radiation dose from CT to be 1-2 times that of a standard angiogram, and certainly the same as, if not less than, the dose from a nuclear stress test.

But facts shouldn't get in the way of selling papers (or, in the case of Fox News, selling...um, what is it that they're selling anyway?) So what started out on Monday as the scientific presentation of a very successful randomized clinical trial of Multislice CT, turned within 24 hours into the totally fear-mongering headline above -- which is great on Halloween, but not so much when people's healthcare is concerned.

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