Robert Reinhart, MD

 
 
The correct answer is “sometimes. “
 
Obviously, contrast that your drink ends up in your bowels. If the CT scan includes an area of your body that has bowel, this can be useful. If the CT scan is of your head, then oral contrast has no use.
 
In addition, it depends what the doctor is looking for, on the CT. A hernia? Oral contrast is very helpful. Lymph nodes? Oral contrast is very helpful. Kidney stone? Not so helpful. The whole thing is fairly complicated. There is no single answer. It all depends on the type of scan, part of body involved, and the pathology suspected.
 
Your doctor will order a CT scan with, or without IV contrast. Also with, or without oral contrast. If you lack confidence in your doctors ability to order the correct study, you should seek a second opinion. 

Probably not an issue. EKG leads do not interfere with typical CT scans. However, it depends on what kind of CT scan, and of what organ. Some heart CTs are triggered by the patient's EKG tracing. So in some very specific instances, failure of the EKG can affect the scan. I would think that would be something you would have known about going into the scan. You use the phrase 'false reading.' This is not a phrase I have ever heard in conjunction with a CT scan. So I suspect there has been some miscommunication.
 
I would suggest you ask the doctor who ordered the scan. They can obtain details from the radiologist.
 
 

What does this mean? One answer is "nothing."
 
There is no widely used, standard nomenclature for describing disc disease. I hear people say they have, "one bulging disc, one wide disc, one degenerated disc, and one herniated disc." None of these terms have specific meanings. Their use widely overlaps. They may mean the same thing. One person may describe the same disc as 'herniated' one day, and 'bulging' another. One could argue, that these words are used interchangeably. The word choice is not important. The location of the disease is the issue. 
 
What this means is that you have an abnormal disc at a certain level. This does not necessarily mean that the disc is the problem. Most adults in the United States have bulging discs. Most bulging discs  Do not cause symptoms. So just because a disc is abnormal, does not mean it needs to be fixed. It also does not mean that the disc is causing your current problem.
 
Presumably, you went to a doctor with a specific problem. Perhaps it was pain, decreased grip strength in one hand. Whatever. Presumably, the doctor who ordered the scan has examined you. They will know from the location of your pain, exam of your sensory and motor nerves, as well as reflexes, where the problem lies. They order the scan to see if the problem is due to disc, bone, tumor, or some other abnormality.
 
So the MRI is not the diagnosis. It is not stand-alone information. It is one piece of data that your doctor will use in conjunction with your symptoms, physical exam, and history, to determine where the problem lies, and hopefully how to fix it. Trying to determine what an MRI means, without a physical exam, complaints, and history would be responsible.  
 
Talk to the doctor who ordered the scan.
 

How long does it take?
 
Typically one breath hold. Different body parts are different. But it generally takes way longer to get registered, and get positioned, than it does to take the images.
 
 

Yes, it can. This is a bit of an awkward question. I would be concerned if there is some underlying misunderstanding. My first thought would be that you have an abnormal chest x-ray. Someone tried to explain it to you, and the message didn't get communicated effectively.
 Inflammation is more of a symptom than a diagnosis. As an example. Skin can become inflamed. A polaroid camera can show skin inflammation. However, it doesn't say if the inflammation is from sunburn, poison ivy, Lyme's disease drug reaction, infection, or a blood clot.
 Sounds like you need to communicate more effectively with the person ordering your tests.  One of the more powerful ways to do this is to listen to them. Figure out what you think they are saying. Then repeat that back to them in your own words. Try prefacing that with the phrase, "I am understanding you to say....." Now the doctor knows not just what he/she told you, but how much of that you are understanding. Good luck.
 
 

It seems strange anyone would ask such a question in this forum.
 
This is a complex decision shared with surgery, medical oncology and Radiation Oncology. Numerous factors including surgery type, incision, cancer type, tumor location, stage, previous radiation, genomics, pre-albumin levels just to mention a few.
 
I would assume you have cancer, and are slated for surgery, and post operative radiation? If so, I would caution you most strongly against an internet chat room second opinion. If you are less than confident with your medical care, get a second opinion. A real second opinion. From a real Oncology team.
 
Good luck.
 
 

Radiation burns are a function of dose. So higher doses, like Radiation therapy, are more likely to cause injury. Lower doses, like from complex X-ray procedures are less likely to injure the skin. A skin injury can be seen during the first four weeks. And sometimes as far out as three months. If you have something you think maybe a burn, show it to your doctor.

Stat - Within an hour
Outpatient - Can take days

Sometimes, if there are comparison studies that need to be obtained, even longer.

CT is useful for detecting, staging and monitoring the progression of lung cancer. 
 
 

Two objects that are of the same density, are difficult to tell apart. Think, the front wall of the stomach is the same density as the back wall of the stomach. If the two are touching each other, it's hard to sort them out. However, if you put something of a different density in between them, then they are separate and can evaluate individually. So, water in the stomach helps to evaluate for abnormalities like ulcers and masses.
 

 

A CT of the neck will show the thyroid gland. Unfortunately, a CT is not a very good technique for evaluating the thyroid. In fact, imaging (CT, MRI, and Ultrasound) is notoriously poor at evaluating the thyroid. Imaging should generally NOT be used to evaluate thyroid function. (Hypo and hyper) Imaging is also not great at telling the very common, non-cancerous thyroid nodules, from the very rare cancerous nodules.
 
Working up thyroid nodules is frequently done poorly. These workups are often done poorly by advanced practitioners and non-specialists. If there is concern about a thyroid nodule, involve an ENT early rather than later. This can save headaches and unnecessary tests.
 
 

No. No. It doesn't.
 
 

Reactions to Iodinated contrast are typically poorly understood. By both the public, and many physicians. True allergies to Iodine based contrast are actually very rare. Allergy to iodine itself is impossible. That being said, the contrast agents used for CT and MR are not related. There is no cross-reactivity. A previous reaction to an iodine-based contrast would not put a patient at any risk, higher than baseline, for a reaction to MRI contrast.

The findings on any scan, any imaging are not 'stand-alone.' They are one piece of data your doctor uses to diagnose and treat. This data must be synthesized with your history, medications, labs and physical exam. Bone scans are often, but not exclusively used to look for bone infection. If you have questions, they would be best answered by the physician who ordered the scan.
 

Your doctor can charge for offering care to you. Giving results is part of care. It gets complicated in terms of the level of thought and planning involved. A related question is if your insurance company will allow such a charge...
 
 

CT scans are not interpreted in a vacuum. They provide one piece of information. Your doctor will synthesize that information with your labs, your complaints, your vital signs and your history. So you really cannot expect anyone who does not have all that information, to be able to help. Call the doctor who ordered the study. If they don't return your call, get another doctor. Give that doctor access to all your information.Paraphrasing a few lines from a CT scan report, without relevant clinical background, could lead down a very wrong path.
 
RDR
 
 

CT scans can show lung damage. They can show the damage, but not the cause of the damage.
 
 

A CT scan is an X-ray of the chest. The X-ray machine circles around you when you are inside the doughnut. It shoots X-rays into your body. It measures how many come out the other side.  So what a CT scanner 'sees' (counts really) is how many X-rays get stopped by your body, and how many come all the way through.  So a CT scanner can tell how much each part of the body absorbs X-rays. That is a measure of the density of the tissue.  The scanner then uses all these density measurements, to generate pictures.
 For example, a lung is usually filled with air. Hence, it is not very dense. Most X rays go all the way through the lung.  If a lung fills with fluid, the fluid is denser than air. So a fluid-filled lung stops more X rays. The CT scanner doesn't count as many X-rays coming out the other side. It registers the higher density of the fluid-filled lung.  The CT scanner can't tell if the fluid is infected fluid from pneumonia, sterile fluid from heart failure, or swallowed fluid that went down the wrong pipe. It just sees density.
 A specialist in Radiology reviews the CT scan. They have spent years studying different patterns and distributions of different densities, in different parts of the body. They issue a report on what the CT shows. This report is made available to the Doctor that ordered the CT scan.  This report, along with your complaints, medical history, labs, and physical exam helps your doctor figure out what is going on. 
So when a disease causes parts of the body to be a different density than normal, a CT scan will show that disease. Like fluid in a lung, or a break in a dense bone.  When the diseased tissue is the same density as healthy tissue, a CT scan is not as helpful. For example, a tumor inside a kidney is often the same density as normal kidney tissue.  So to register that tumor, a CT scanner would not be great.  Additional steps like injecting contrast into the vein may be needed, or other techniques like MRI or Ultrasound.  In a different way, a stomach with an ulcer can have the same density as a stomach without an ulcer. In those cases, an endoscope would be a better way to make a diagnosis. So CT scanners see density. Radiologists use those density measurements to infer what disease is the cause.
 
 
 
 
 
 

This could be several things. It would be impossible to offer even an educated guess without seeing the actual images. In addition, the imaging is not the diagnosis. It is one piece of information your doctor will use. That information would be used along with information from your physical exam and pain history. Lookin only at the report takes one piece of information out of context. You should review this with your doctor. If you do not feel your doctor is up to the task, get a second opinion. At this point, the amount of information to be synthesized is well beyond a website's capabilities..

Treatment for any cancer is individualized. Some of the critical facts that help determine the need for radiation are cancer type, stage and grade. These are critical, and every cancer patient should commit these to memory. These numbers are more important than your social security number or your wife's birthday. Learn them. Know them. Talk to your Urologist and Radiation Oncologist. Find out what the NUMBERS are for someone with your stage and grade. What is the survival with, and without radiation? What is the likelihood of cancer coming back, with and without radiation? How often do complications arise? The answers to these questions should come as numbers, not words. Words like "unlikely" or "unusual" are not nearly as helpful as numbers like 20% or less than 1%.