Picano Eugenio, Mangia Cristina, D'Andrea Antonello
Institute of Clinical Physiology, CNR, 56124 Pisa, Italy.
ISAC-Institute of Sciences of Atmosphere and Climate, CNR, 73100 Lecce, Italy.
J Clin Med. 2022 Dec 27;12(1):215. doi: 10.3390/jcm12010215.
Human activities have raised the atmosphere's carbon dioxide (CO) content by 50% in less than 200 years and by 10% in the last 15 years. Climate change is a great threat and presents a unique opportunity to protect cardiovascular health in the next decades. CO equivalent emission is the most convenient unit for measuring the greenhouse gas footprint corresponding to ecological cost. Medical imaging contributes significantly to the CO emissions responsible for climate change, yet current medical guidelines ignore the carbon cost. Among the common cardiac imaging techniques, CO emissions are lowest for transthoracic echocardiography (0.5-2 kg per exam), increase 10-fold for cardiac computed tomography angiography, and 100-fold for cardiac magnetic resonance. A conservative estimate of 10 billion medical examinations per year worldwide implies that medical imaging accounts for approximately 1% of the overall carbon footprint. In 2016, CO emissions from magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography, calculated in 120 countries, accounted for 0.77% of global emissions. A significant portion of global greenhouse gas emissions is attributed to health care, which ranges from 4% in the United Kingdom to 10% in the United States. Assessment of carbon cost should be a part of the cost-benefit balance in medical imaging.
人类活动在不到200年的时间里使大气中的二氧化碳（CO）含量增加了50%，在过去15年里增加了10%。气候变化是一个巨大的威胁，同时也为未来几十年保护心血管健康提供了一个独特的机会。二氧化碳当量排放是衡量与生态成本相对应的温室气体足迹最方便的单位。医学成像对导致气候变化的二氧化碳排放有重大贡献，但目前的医学指南忽略了碳成本。在常见的心脏成像技术中，经胸超声心动图的二氧化碳排放量最低（每次检查0.5-2千克），心脏计算机断层血管造影术增加10倍，心脏磁共振成像增加100倍。全球每年保守估计有100亿次医学检查，这意味着医学成像约占总体碳足迹的1%。2016年，在120个国家计算得出的磁共振成像和计算机断层扫描的二氧化碳排放量占全球排放量的0.77%。全球温室气体排放的很大一部分归因于医疗保健，在英国占4%，在美国占10%。碳成本评估应该成为医学成像成本效益平衡的一部分。
