What types of diseases are most commonly discovered by scans?
It’s a wide range. The principal body areas of interest are the chest and abdomen. Vascular disease, that is, disorders of the blood vessels, may be found. These include aortic aneurysms, which are abnormally enlarged vessel segments that usually arise in older men, particularly if they have ever used tobacco. Small nodules in the lungs are occasionally discovered. It is quite common to find benign tumors or masses, such as cysts, in the liver and/or kidneys. My area of specialty is in the endocrine glands of the body: thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal and pancreas. A significant number of findings on body scanning occur in these endocrine glands. The likelihood of having an abnormal growth on a scan increases with an individual’s age. For instance, approximately 4 percent of body scans performed on people aged 60 years will reveal an abnormal mass in one of the adrenal glands. This is considered a common problem by medical standards. How helpful are body scans in detecting cancer in its e
