Cardiologists are causing patients to get cancer.

It’s true.

Cardiologists routinely perform angiograms on patients who have no heart disease whatsoever.

As shown in this Harvard newsletter, each angiogram exposes the patients to about 7 mSv of radiation. Add in the myocardial perfusion imaging at another 25 mSv of radiation and you have enough radiation to cause cancer in an otherwise healthy individual.

And cardiologists routinely subject patients with normal coronary arteries to this dangerous testing … as can clearly be seen by all of the normal angiogram results.

Not only does this type of wasteful testing line the pockets of the cardiologists who order, perform, and interpret the tests, but it is dangerous to the patients and can lead to many types of cancer in the patients that the cardiologists are supposed to be helping.

In fact, Dr. Rita Redberg could personally be responsible for multiple cancer deaths due to radiation from angiograms she has recommended on patients with normal coronary arteries throughout her career.

Fortunately, we can reduce the rate of medical imaging by simply avoiding unnecessary scans on patients with normal coronary arteries and minimizing the radiation from appropriate testing. Practices such as performing angiograms on patients with normal coronary arteries, for which there is little or no evidence of benefit, should be eliminated.

Wait. Did I hear some cardiologists objecting? Cursing my name?

What’s that, you say? There’s no evidence for the allegations I’m making? They’re preposterous?

Yeah, you’re probably right.

But it’s interesting because the last paragraph parroted the assertions that a colleague of yours made while discussing emergency physicians in the New York Times. In her column, Dr. Rita Redberg stated,

… fortunately, we can reduce the rate of medical imaging by simply avoiding unnecessary scans and minimizing the radiation from appropriate ones. For example, emergency room physicians routinely order multiple CT scans even before meeting a patient. Such practices, for which there is little or no evidence of benefit, should be eliminated.

No basis for her statements. No scientific evidence. Just some cheapshot about emergency medical care that she obviously knows little or nothing about.

This type of statement should seriously draw into question any of the other statements of scientific “fact” that Dr. Redberg makes.

And if the cardiologists and the American College of Cardiology are outraged by the unsubstantiated assertions in this post but don’t take issue with Dr. Redberg’s New York Times misstatements, then they are just as dishonest and misinformed as Dr. Redberg.

WhiteCoat is an emergency physician who blogs at WhiteCoat’s Call Room at Emergency Physicians Monthly and Dr. Whitecoat.