Radiation is both a healer and a killer: it has revolutionized the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases and almost eliminated the need for once-common exploratory surgeries, while at the same time subjecting patients and medical staff to its dangers, which include cancer risk. Its use is growing rapidly: Americans' exposure to medical radiation increased more than sixfold between the 1980s and 2006, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP). This is largely due to a rapid increase in the use of advanced imaging and treatment technologies such as computed tomography (CT; which alone accounts for 24% of all radiation exposure in the US), nuclear medicine (including lung, heart, bone, and brain scans), radiation therapy for cancer, and interventional fluoroscopy. The latter includes a vast array of common image-guided procedures such as angiographies, angioplasties, and stent implantations, along with more complex (and high-dose) minimally invasive treatments throughout the body such as abdominal aortic aneurysm endograft implantations, vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty in the spine, embolizations in the brain and other areas, cardiac ablation, and a host of others, according to the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). More than 70 million CT scans, 18 million nuclear medicine procedures, and 17 million interventional fluoroscopy procedures are performed in the US each year, according to the NCRP, and these figures will continue to grow. In fact, interventional procedures are responsible for about 90% of the total radiation exposure in the medical field.
The growing use and increasing complexity of these procedures have been accompanied by public health concerns about the increasing radiation exposure to both patients and health care personnel, and a number of industry players – physicians, technologists, medical physicists, fluoroscopy and radiation therapy equipment manufacturers, and medical and governmental organizations – are implementing strategies to optimize radiation doses and improve safety. Medtech start-ups, such as the three innovators detailed in this issue, are seizing the opportunity to provide add-on solutions to increase safety and efficacy in radiation therapy and fluoroscopy
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