Americans 'too fat for x-rays'

Increasing numbers of Americans are becoming too fat to fit into X-ray machines, US searchers report....

The nation's rising obesity problems mean many citizens are not only too large for scanners but they have too much fat for the rays to penetrate.
Over the past 15 years, the number of failed scans linked to patient obesity has doubled, Radiology journal reports.
The problem is not confined to scanners. UK hospitals have had to make their beds stronger for obese patients.

And airlines are designing aircraft to carry heavier loads because passengers are becoming plumper.
Dr Raul Uppot and colleagues, who work in radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, had noticed that they were seeing more and more patients whose weight prevented them from having medical scans.
He and his team decided to look back at radiology reports between 1989 and 2003 to see the extent of the problem.
Missed diagnoses
Year on year they saw a small but significant increase in the number of scans that had to be abandoned because the patient was too fat.
Ultrasound images were affected the most because the sound waves need to penetrate the skin and fatty tissue before reaching the organs being examined.
The study authors warned that important diagnoses could be missed if people could not be scanned.
The US government says 64% of the population are overweight.

Hispanics and blacks account for more then 70 % of all overweights in us....