The Case Against Blaming “Body Habitus” in Higher-Weight Patients' Radiology Reports

I was recently advocating for a patient who needed an emergency head CT to rule out some potentially serious complications. (Luckily she was fine and her symptoms had the least concerning diagnosis.) Of course, I have her permission to write about this.A content note, this post is going to include medical weight stigma.After the imaging was done and the report completed the doctor came into the room to tell her that everything on the CT looked “great”.The next day, the results were released to her MyChart and she had an unpleasant experience that I’ve heard from many other patients.The first line of the “impression” section was “Significantly limited evaluation due to body habitus.” That was also the first line of the “findings” section. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe