Fabulous: researchers reported this month that increasing obesity in America has caused a doubling in the number of radiologic studies that gave limited results. The limitations were most-often seen in ultrasound studies, which depend on a sound wave that has to penetrate through the skin and soft tissue and then bounce back to a detector; other times, the problem was something as simple as patients being unable to fit inside the CT or MRI scanner. The numbers are small — the increase is around a hundredth of a percent per year — but given the fact that we know obesity’s increasing at amazing rates, it’s a sign of the difficulties doctors and patients are going to face over the coming decades. (Nevermind the fact that you know a trend’s probably real when the biomedical marketers jump onto it…)