Morbidly Obese .

 Americas skyrocketing numbers of the morbidly obese is causing a huge problem for all of radiology. Recent government study showed 5 percent of adults in the United States are classified as morbidly obese which totals out to about 9 million. Morbidly obese is defined as 50 to 100 percent or 100 pounds above a persons ideal body weight. Sadly in the world of radiology size does matter. Doing a CT or MR for a 200 pound patient is completely normal and a standard procedure but a 400, 600, or 800 pound patient causes radiologist to have trouble interpreting the image because of poor image quality. Radiologist have noted sheet charts when sent back to the doctor saying that they had "procedural limitations" due to a patients body or excessive weight translating into the patient was too large to fit into the CT or MR machine. Even when a morbidly obese patient is able to squeeze through a CT gantries or MR bores the images turn out strikingly fuzzy. CT units weight capacity is 450 pounds which is a likely weight in the morbidly obese therefore they cannot fit because this 450 pound capacity is including the table which the patient is laying on. When the patient cannot fit it takes radiologist and doctors to a conclusion to do surgical exploration which was used years before CT scans existed. This is a way to an alternative but is costly on the patient and takes a longer time. This takes a huge emotional toll on the patient as well when their told that basically they're too big to fit inside the machine which causes great stress. Lucky since this study came out about how many morbidly obese patients there some models of CT and MR machines are being made-over to hold a greater weight capacity of 800 pounds instead of 450 pounds. Yes, these new machines being re-done are a benefit to the morbidly obese the new machines are rare to see in a common hospital and are spread out over the country to few hospitals so a morbidly obese person would most likely have to travel if they really needed a CT or MR done.