The cholesterol - heart disease scam: How the medical-industrial complex is raking in billions at our expense

Stenoses in general "are not necessarily a threat," says Dr Eric Topol (Scripps Translational Science Institute, La Jolla, CA) in the article, which explains that CT angiography can't usually show when a stenosis is functionally serious and can never predict when a plaque is likely to rupture. 

There certainly is this idea that having a test can help you prevent a heart attack, and I don't know where it came from.  Dr Rita Redberg (University of California, San Francisco), "a leading critic of the scans," is quoted as saying, "No data suggest that there's any reason for anyone asymptomatic to have a test.  .  .  .  There certainly is this idea that having a test can help you prevent a heart attack, and I don't know where it came from."

And Dr Howard C Herrmann, director of interventional cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, says: "I find many patients have CT angiograms who shouldn't be getting CT angiograms."

Unnecessary scans expose patients to considerable radiation, an amount equal to more than 1000 chest X-rays, according to the journalists, whose numbers were estimated based on the scanning session of one patient featured in the story.

"Further, each scan creates an additional lifetime risk of cancer that is somewhere between 1 in 200 and 1 in 5000, said Dr David J Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University [New York]," the article states. 

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