Okay, first I’ll say that the test itself was THE most painless thing I’ve ever done medically. I was impressed. Even the x-ray tech was in the same room with no shielding.
Anyway, the person who administerred the test couldn’t make comment, but she showed me the printouts. There was a typical x-ray picture on there, one of the lumbar spine, and one of the left hip. Some numbers were printed on the power right, and on the lower left was a graph which showed two regions, one dark blue, the other light blue, which I assumed were the upper and lower normal bone density ranges. True? There were points on there which I also assumed were what was calculated as my own bone density, and they were right above (for the hip) and below (for the lumbar spine) the centerline of these colored regions. Does this mean that my bone density is right about the average?
I’ll get official results from my doc in about 10 days, but I was just wondering if I was reading this right.
Yeah, it is that simple. The blue region was probably normal, with green above and slightly below. Then it goes to yellow, orange, and red the lower down the y-axis you go, towards osteopenia, and then osteoporosis.
As long as you were “in the blue” you should be alright.
Ok, so I know the opportunity is long past, but if you ever got another dexascan, there’s a really sweet prank you could pull.
Ok, you know in the movie “Aliens” when the alien head like pops out of that guys abdomen? Yeah, that’s right, you know where I’m goin with this. So the tricky part would be getting the skull of some small mamal, or maybe even a duck. Then you make a few slight modifications to the skull, and then, and this might require eating something REALLY greasy beforehand like onion rings, you swallow the skull whole. Make sure you go get the scan done quickly after this, cuz you’re probably going to be in some serious pain soon(don’t worry, it will be worth it). As soon as the tech sees the results, he’ll/she’ll probably be all predictable and say something like, "Oh… oh, my god; i’ve never seen something like… dear god, WHAT IS THAT???. And then you’d act like you didn’t really hear him and just kind of stumble up to him and start moaning and be like “unn…UUUNNNNHHHH OHHHH AHHHHH!!!” and then just start screaming and pushing your stomach out. By then he’ll either pass out or run off to get sigourney weaver, and you’ll be able to like, steal tongue depressors and other medical whatnot.
LOL! During my ER rotation as a resident the ER doc called me over to look at a GI film - the entire monopoly set was in this guys/gals stomach. You could make out the pieces pretty well since they are metal! Shoe, iron, horse, dog, etc.
To the OP, you physician will talk to you about your “numbers” which will be normalized to your age and ethnicity (asians and blacks for example have very different rates of osteopenia/osteoporosis). Based on the value (- 1.5 for example) and other risk/health factors, you physician may or may not recommend one of the bisphosphate drugs or just a calcium/vit D supplementation.
It is a standard liability issue. Since the techs are not licensed to “read” the studies, they are advised not to comment to patients (or other physicians for that matter)–this is despite that fact that any experienced tech needs to know enough about the interpretation to know whether the results are valid or whether the test needs repeating.
How else will the radiologists justify their high-dollar charge for interpretation if a $20/hr tech can tell you the result in 2 minutes??
Yeah, I knew WHY she couldn’t say anything, but I still thought it was kind of silly, since I could tell the first time I’d ever seen it what it was saying (I just needed some one to say “yup, that’s it”).
