While you will probably, at some point, be worrying about how you are going to pay for the treatments for the heart attack brought about by the stress of loosing your job, having your wife and kids tossed out into the streets because your home is being foreclosed on and spending a couple of fruitless years in a job search, comes this bit of news that will not make lying on your back at one of our great medical gold mines any better.
It seems that the average American patient being diagnosed and treated for a heart attack will receive an effective radiation dose of 14.5 millisieverts. That is about a third of the annual maximum dose permitted for workers in a nuclear power plant.
As a heart patient you are given an average of seven tests using ionizing radiation — the type that can pass through tissues but that also can damage DNA and cells in a very short span.
Most, or 83 percent of all patients, received chest X-rays. Some 77 percent had catheter procedures such as an angiogram, 15 percent had computed tomography or CT scans and 12 percent had a head CT.
In August a team at Emory University in Atlanta reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that as many as 4 million Americans a year are exposed to high doses of radiation.
And a report in March from the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement found Americans are exposed to seven times more radiation from diagnostic scans than in 1980.
Imaging equipment makers such as GE Healthcare, Siemens, Philips and Toshiba Medical Systems are working to develop low-dose CT scanners.
Meanwhile the bill collectors for the medical community are thrilled. They can always use a Geiger counter to track you down for the dun.