BMJ  2005;330:272 (5 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7486.272-a

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US commercial scanning clinics are closing down

Scott Gottlieb

New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The trend in the United States for people to pay for whole body computed tomography scans has declined, and once thriving large businesses set up for the purpose are now closing down their operations.

The growth began in the late 1990s with the creation of hundreds of scanning centres, many of which funded large advertising campaigns aimed directly at the consumer. Thousands of Americans were paying out of their own pockets for the scans, which could cost $1000 (£530; {euro}770) or more.

Whole body scans gained much momentum in 2000, helped in large part by a high profile media campaign by Dr Harvey Eisenberg, the owner of HealthView, a scanning centre in Newport Beach, California.

Academic medical centres also got into the business, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard, which opened its "Be Well Body" scan. The centre is owned by the Beth Israel Radiology Foundation, a non-profit . . . [Full text of this article]


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Kamran Abbasi
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MRI please
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