Since the Bank Secrecy Act of 1973 requires your bank to microfilm all of your checks and hold these records for six years, the state can get intimate details of your life from a study of your checking account.
The rap against MRIs as a diagnostic tool for low back pain is not that the scans usually reveal nothing, or even that they're expensive, it's that they often show a lot of abnormalities in the back that may have nothing to do with the source of your pain.
While the MRI scan represents a very sensitive and accurate assessment of spinal anatomy, it cannot distinguish between painful and non-painful structures in the spine. In fact, a patient may have severe back pain and an MRI scan that shows a relatively normal-looking spine, or conversely may have no back pain but the MRI scan reveals a lot of anatomical problems. Thus, the findings on MRI scans do not constitute a diagnosis and the MRI findings must be correlated with the patientâs physical exam and back pain symptoms to arrive at a clinical diagnosis.