A new study from University of Michigan Medical School says that people who suffer from headaches waste practically $1 billion a year getting brain scans.
This study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
According to Medical Daily, one in eight visits for headaches or migraines now end in a brain scan. The number of people getting brain scans for common headaches is increasing despite that there are very few cases in which a scan should really be used.
"Lots of guidelines say we shouldn't do this — including ones from neurology and radiology groups — but yet we still do it a lot,” said Dr. Brian Callaghan, lead author of the study. “This is a source of tremendous cost in health care without a lot of evidence to justify the cost.”
Even though so many people are now receiving these scans for the common headache, only one to three percent of the scans performed show any type of abnormality, according to Science World Report.
While Callaghan realizes the patient’s health is still in question, many doctors do not take the cost of such procedures into consideration, especially, when many are unnecessary.