In fact, a poll conducted at the turn of the millennium revealed that the two most important medical innovations in the latter half of the 20th century were the introduction of CT and MRI scanning. No one who knows anything about medicine would doubt for a moment that the advent of radiology has completely transformed the way physicians care for patients. And the patient does not go through life with a surgical scar or increased risk of developing a bowel obstruction. While CT scans are expensive compared to doing nothing, they constitute a small fraction of the combined cost of anesthesiologist’s and surgeon’s fees, operating room and recovery room time, and prolonged hospitalization and post-operative recovery.
The patient whose imaging findings don’t indicate surgical therapy and doesn’t undergo an operation is spared risks of anesthesia, infection, and bleeding. Important risks, costs, and downstream effects of surgery can be completely avoided. This ability offers huge benefits to the patient and savings to the healthcare system. For example, it is now possible completely to assess the extent of abdominal trauma patients’ injuries with a CT scan, only operating on the small number whose injuries are associated with severe, ongoing blood loss or the interruption of blood flow to a vital organ. Hundreds of thousands of patients each year, who would once have undergone diagnostic surgeries intended to determine what ails them, can now be evaluated in a non-invasive fashion.
Anyone who has seen x-ray, ultrasound, CT, or MR images of the human body knows that we now routinely peer inside it without cutting it open. The contemporary medical field of radiology exhibits both revelatory and apocalyptic features. With apocalypse, there is a clear connotation that what is unseen has been intentionally hidden. These interpretations imply no prior effort to conceal. The idea is not merely that we can bring things shrouded in darkness to light, or make visible what was once invisible. Instead the word apocalypse, which is composed of the roots for “away” and “cover,” means to pull the cover away, to reveal, and to see hidden things. In fact, the Greeks who introduced the word over 2,000 years ago had no intention of invoking the end times. When many people hear the word apocalypse, they picture four remorseless horsemen bringing death and destruction during the world’s final days.