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During a pandemic, many do computed tomography for prevention. But in order for the examination to be useful, it can be carried out only as directed by a doctor.
Physician at the Semeynaya clinic
Main symptoms
Most patients confuse “strange sensations” in the chest and shortness of breath, the main symptom of pneumonia. Pain in the chest or between the shoulder blades, loss of smell is not a reason for a chest CT scan. Remember how you breathe, if you run a kilometer or walk 10 floors, this is shortness of breath. With pneumonia, it does not match the level of physical activity. For example, a person has washed the floors and breathes as if he was running a cross country. At the same time, there are other symptoms of respiratory diseases:
fever,
cough
a sore throat.
On blood oxygen measurements (pulse oximetry), oxygen levels of 93% or less are suspicious for pneumonia, but only if shortness of breath is present. Important: if you suspect you have pneumonia, see your doctor immediately. But don’t give yourself a CT scan yourself..
back side
In a few minutes, a computer tomograph takes 256-512 X-rays every second. The dose of radiation received in 1 CT scan of the chest is approximately equal to the dose of radiation received from the sun in 2 years of life. This is a fairly high load, therefore, CT scan should be done only in case of symptoms of respiratory failure (pneumonia) and only as directed by the attending physician. A repeat CT scan of the chest should be done even less frequently and only if there is sufficient reason for the study. Large doses of radiation can lead to the following untidy consequences:
burns,
changes in blood composition,
early aging of the body,
infertility
the development of genetic abnormalities in offspring.
No one can know if you will need X-rays in the near future. No one is immune from injuries, as well as other diseases that require X-ray diagnostics, and the radiation dose will increase in this case.
In order not to expose yourself and your possible offspring to risks, do not do CT with the purpose of “let’s see.”
Operating principle
Modern computed tomography Is a hardware and software complex made using very precise technologies. The tomograph usually looks like a tube in which a table with a patient resting on it can move in the back and forth direction. Due to the fact that some people may experience a fear of a confined space or have a very large waist and chest volume, there are modern tomographs that are made in the form of rings and arches, there is no confined space in them. In these ring-shaped structures, X-ray emitters and receivers rotate around the patient at a very high speed – so that every second hundreds of very thin sections (about 1 mm thick) are made, and then these sections are processed by a computer so that they can be viewed in a “stack” or build a three-dimensional image. Since different tissues transmit X-rays in different ways, the doctor can instruct the computer to show only dense or soft structures, and you can see, for example, only one skeleton of a patient or only his internal organs. This allows a very thorough examination of all corners of the body.
Computed tomography result – this is a large file with information that can always be output to a printer or film and get hundreds of X-ray images of a patient at the right angles, or display the images so that a three-dimensional model of the patient’s body is obtained. A radiologist is trained to see different details of diseases on X-rays, so he can detect pneumonia (it looks like a thickening of lung tissue), and, for example, cancer (it looks like a volumetric formation of some tissue).
What else
CT scan well sees tumor metastases in the bones of the skeleton, in the lymph nodes. It copes well with hemorrhages in soft tissues, therefore it is indispensable for the diagnosis of strokes, brain injuries. CT of the lungs helps to detect at an early and late stage lung cancer, tuberculosis. There are even dental mini-CT scans that give doctors a quick picture of how a patient’s jaws and teeth are arranged; it is irreplaceable in terms of dental implantation and prosthetics. The field of application of CT today is very wide, but the main thing is to remember that all this is being done strictly according to the doctor’s prescription.