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The article offers information on spaces around Nashville, Tennessee which became space for alternative expression which is allowed and even becomes treasured by fiercely loyal communities in the counter culture.

This article discusses a study which found that cardiovascular disease (CVD) can be predicted through incidental findings of calcifications of the aortic wall on chest computed tomography.

If health care costs are ever to be brought under control, the nation's doctors will have to play a leading role in eliminating unnecessary treatments. By some estimates, hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted this way every year. So it is highly encouraging that nine major physicians' groups have identified 45 tests and procedures (five for each specialty) that are commonly used but have no proven benefit for many patients and sometimes cause more harm than good. Many patients will be surprised at the tests and treatments that these expert groups now question. They include, for example, annual electrocardiograms for low-risk patients and routine chest X-rays for ambulatory patients in advance of surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article deals with the failure of annual chest X-rays to significantly reduce the death rate from lung cancer based on a study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in 2011 and published online by the "Journal of the American Medical Association."

An interactive graphic of Medicare outpatient records shows how often hospitals performed two CT chest scans on the same patient in one day. nytimes.com/national [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Long after questions were first raised about the overuse of powerful CT scans, hundreds of hospitals across the country needlessly exposed patients to radiation by scanning their chests twice on the same day, according to federal records and interviews with researchers. Performing two scans in succession is rarely necessary, radiologists say, yet some hospitals were doing that more than 80 percent of the time for their Medicare chest patients, according to Medicare outpatient claims from 2008, the most recent year available. The rate is typically less than 1 percent, or in some cases zero, at major university teaching hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on a study which concluded that clinicians should depend on historical and clinical factors to determine the need for chest radiography for wheezing afebrile children and avoid regular chest X-rays in some patients.

Highlights the usefulness of annual chest X-rays for determining lung cancer among smokers and former smokers. Comparison of earlier studies on the issue with the study conducted by Dr. Gary Strauss of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Method, observation and results of the studies; Data on number of smokers in the United States.