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Many cancer patients are covered by Medicare, and imaging is the fastest growing expense for Medicare. Duke University investigators used a Medicare claims database to quantify imaging use and costs for 101,000 patients (median age, 76) during the 2 years after diagnosis of leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or breast, colorectal, lung, or prostate cancer from 1999 through 2006.
Imaging use varied widely by cancer type, with the highest rates for patients with lung cancer and lymphoma. By 2006, the average lung cancer patient underwent, in the 2 years following diagnosis, 11 conventional x-rays, 6 computed tomography scans, 1 positron-emission tomography (PET) scan, 1 nuclear medicine test, 1 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, 2 echocardiog…