In next month’s issues of Radiology magazine a report claims Americans are growing so large that patients are increasingly too big to fit into X-ray scanners. Their fat is also too dense for X-rays or sound waves to penetrate.
Hospital equipment manufacturers have to build new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners with extra-large boreholes to accommodate obese patients.
Dr Raul Uppot, one of the reports authors said: "In an obese person, because the ultrasound beam does not get to the organs or get to them adequately enough, we cannot get a picture”.
