MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD New York University School of Medicine Department of Population Health New York, NY 10016 Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Ladapo: We showed that the use of cardiac stress testing has risen briskly over the past two decades, with the use of imaging growing particularly rapidly. We also showed that national growth in cardiac stress test use can largely be explained by population and provider characteristics, but the use of imaging cannot. Importantly, nearly one third of cardiac stress tests with imaging tests were probably inappropriate, because they were performed in patients who rarely benefit from imaging. These tests--about 1 million each year--are associated with about half a billion dollars in healthcare costs annually and lead to about 500 people developing cancer in their lifetime because of radiation they received during that cardiac stress test. (more…)