Jill Wruble is a
radiologist and fellow at
Johns Hopkins Medicine who is best known as a speaker on overdiagnosis due to
incidental imaging finding in United States medicine.
Biography
Wruble is a director at the National Association of Veteran Affairs Physicians and Dentists and a fellow at Johns Hopkins Medicine, in Radiology and Radiological Science.
She retired from the
United States Army with rank of major. She is a graduate of
Williams College and the
New York College of Osteopathic Medicine. She was a clinical assistant professor who taught residents at Yale School of Medicine as recently as 2016.
Work on incidentaloma
Her TEDx Penn talk about these
incidentalomas
In medical or research imaging, an incidental imaging finding (also called an incidentaloma) is an unanticipated finding which is not related to the original diagnostic inquiry. As with other types of incidental medical findings, they may represen ...
discussed how doctors treat abnormalities on tests, which lead to expensive further testing and potential overdiagnosis and overtreatment. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the reduced availability for elective surgeries in some areas, she is among the doctors calling for a reevaluation of aggressive
cancer screenings and treatment that may cause harm to patients.
She says that with contemporary
CT scans
A computed tomography scan (CT scan; formerly called computed axial tomography scan or CAT scan) is a medical imaging technique used to obtain detailed internal images of the body. The personnel that perform CT scans are called radiographers ...
providing a large number of very detailed images, "
now see things that we would have never seen before, like a lesion that may never be a problem"
and that it's typical to see multiple abnormalities with each scan.
Wruble is concerned with "the unintended consequences of medical testing" and along with co-author
Joann Elmore
Dr. Joann G. Elmore is a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, professor of Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Director of the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program, the endowed cha ...
has written about her skepticism of
computer aided diagnosis as a tool for detecting breast cancer. A paper that she contributed to, "Effective Radiology Reporting"
is often cited in papers on incidentaloma.
References
External links
Wruble’s TEDx talk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wruble, Jill
New York Institute of Technology alumni
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)