via New York Times – the challenge of patients demanding inappropriate MRIs

The New York Times is a great source of sports medicine news and Gina Kolata‘s article about inappropriate use of MR requires little editorializing.

My feeling is that although some doctors diagnose by MR instead of via cognitive processes, that is NOT the problem in sports and exercise medicine. See Chris Milne’s recent lucid description of what happens in the sports medicine setting. However, we are in a phase where PATIENTS are DEMANDING MRs — as this article highlights toward the end.

So the next implementation/knowledge translation challenge is to education patients to value a careful history and physical exam. That won’t be easy in a time where technology is valued – at times to excess.

Don’t forget the BJSM podcasts on imaging – with a particular emphasis on ultrasound’s increasing relevance in the clinic and on the sideline. For those clinicians looking at ways of training in US – click on the podcast with Sean Martin and Kim Harmon from AMSSM.

BJSM priortizes ‘hot topics’ such as sports imaging, US in imaging. You can sign up for free Table of Contents (TOC) via email and over 2000 folks follow us on Twitter (@BJSM_BMJ) where we post alerts to this blog and other useful sport and exercise medicine links.

Have an active weekend and remember that low fitness kills more Americans than smoking, diabetes, and obesity combined (smokadiabesity). If you have any trouble accessing the paper there see also the blog post.

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