Health & Medicine

Critics fear cheaper, better heart scans may be overused

Doctors have a new way to diagnose heart disease that takes only seconds and provides pictures so clear they show every clogged artery and so detailed that it's like holding a living heart in your hand.

The new method is coming into use in scattered areas of the country, and there is wide agreement that it will revolutionize cardiology.

But there is hardly wide agreement over whether this new technique, known as multidetector CT scans of the heart, is a good thing or a bad thing.

The scans can largely replace angiograms, the expensive, onerous way of looking for blockages in arteries, and can make diagnosis so easy that doctors would not hesitate to use them. They are expected to cost about $700, as compared to about $4,000 for a diagnostic angiogram. They take seconds and require no recuperation time; whereas angiograms take nearly an hour and patients have to stay in the hospital for a day. The new scans can see not just the outline of the blood vessels but every detail inside and out.

But, critics say, the situation is ripe for overuse, with doctors scanning people who do not need to be scanned and finding, and fixing medical problems that do not need to be fixed.

WASHINGTON - The abortion pill RU-486 is safe enough to remain on the market with strengthened warnings, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday, despite a third death after the drug's use.

At least three women who took the pill in the United States have died, although the FDA says it has not definitively tied any death to use of the pill.

The FDA approved Mifeprex - Danco Laboratories' trademark for mifepristone - in 2000 to terminate pregnancy up to 49 days after the beginning of the last menstrual cycle.

Mifeprex already carries a black box warning, the agency's most strident alert, to highlight other safety concerns. The FDA said Monday it was expanding the drug's black box warning.

ORLANDO - The world is teetering on the verge of a massive influenza outbreak, and even wealthy nations such as the United States are unprepared for the next pandemic, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report from the Institute of Medicine does not predict when an outbreak might occur, though it notes that the ingredients for a virulent new flu strain already are brewing in Asia.

At least eight Asian nations are dealing with avian flu, which continues to spread among birds and, occasionally, to people. But the deadly virus may be only "a few mutations away" from turning into a form that can be passed easily from person to person, the report concludes.

This year's vaccine shortage in the United States, its authors note, underlined one key vulnerability: the serious lack of flu-shot production worldwide.

The report is based on presentations and discussions from a two-day workshop in June overseen by the Institute of Medicine, a private, nonprofit group that studies health issues. The institute is part of the National Academy of Sciences.

LAS VEGAS - Dieters who want to keep from regaining the pounds they so painstakingly lost would do best to eat low-fat diets rather than curb carbs, new research suggests.

A study presented Monday at a meeting of more than 2,000 obesity experts found it didn't matter what kind of diet was followed to lose weight initially, but keeping from regaining it was another matter.

A low-fat diet "continues to be the key characteristic" of long-term success, said Suzanne Phelan, a Brown University Medical School psychologist who led the work.

Consumers increasingly are losing their enthusiasm for Atkins-style diets as a long-term weight control strategy.

The new study involved 2,700 people in the National Weight Control Registry, which tries to mine secrets of success from people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year.

Those in the study who increased their fat intake over the year after their initial weight loss regained the most weight. They ate less carbohydrates, and the amount of protein in their diets stayed the same, Phelan said.

But a spokeswoman for the Atkins diet organization said that for many of the dieters studied, "the carbs aren't low enough for them to be successful." They also should have replaced carbs with more protein rather than fat, she said.

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