Cullen Ruff is a radiologist and author of Looking Within: Understanding Ourselves through Human Imaging.

The CT contrast shortage is a learning opportunity

Conditions
June 3, 2022

There is currently a pandemic-related shortage of iodinated contrast used for CT scans, predicted to last for several months. While the industry is addressing its own lessons on the supply side of production and distribution, those of us in clinical medicine may use this shortage as an educational opportunity to address contrast demand.

There are multiple ways to perform a CT scan of the same body part, depending on the patient’s …

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The CT contrast shortage is a learning opportunity

A critical moment that resulted in a permanent, devastating consequence

Physician
March 9, 2020

An excerpt from Looking Within: Understanding Ourselves through Human Imaging.

It started as a routine weekend shift, reading studies on patients in the hospital and the emergency department, when the phone rang. Jessie, the nuclear medicine technologist, spoke on the telephone, his matter-of-fact tone slightly colored by …

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A critical moment that resulted in a permanent, devastating consequence

The costly decision of delaying surgery

Conditions
August 29, 2019

It was a common enough reason for someone to have a CT scan. The order read, “Abdominal pain, colon cancer resected in January.” It was now March, only two months post-surgery. Yet the patient’s CT scan showed a number of large masses in the liver, consistent with metastatic cancer.

I compared the current study to the CT performed before surgery. The liver had looked perfectly normal at that time.

“That’s an amazingly …

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The costly decision of delaying surgery

Think you have an iodine allergy? You may want to reconsider.

Conditions
August 13, 2018

Let’s begin with a quiz question:

Patients may be allergic to:

A. oxygen
B. carbon
C. iodine
D. none of the above

If you answered anything but “D,” better keep reading.

Consider this scenario: If a patient is allergic to penicillin, you would document “penicillin” in the medical records. It would never occur to you to list “antibiotics” as an allergy, and you certainly would not call it a “carbon” allergy for slang, just because penicillin contains …

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Think you have an iodine allergy? You may want to reconsider.