New CT Scanner Puts NARH on Cutting EdgeBy Tammy Daniels
08:56AM / Wednesday, November 14, 2007
 | | A close-up of a computerized head scan. |
NORTH ADAMS - With a flourish of his hands over the bed, radiology technician Christopher Wheeler raised the platform up and into the CT scanner.
OK, not really. A technician 10 feet away in a glass-enclosed booth directed the bed's actual movement, but the scanner itself is pretty much as close to magic as a small community hospital can get.
North Adams Regional Hospital has invested $1 million to lease the machine for five years, replacing an outdated 4-slice model that was state-of-the-art four years ago. The hospital unveiled the newly installed scanner on Tuesday.
"For the community, it's a major plus," said Dr. Andre Langlois, a radiologist. "We're in financially tough times so for the hospital to put all this investment in such cutting-edge technology, that can have a tremendous impact on the community."
Technician Christopher Wheeler displays the results of a CT scan. |
The massive Phillips Medical Systems scanner looks something like doughnut - a doughnut that can take 64 X-ray pictures, or .0625-millimeter slices, along a 360-degree axis in a matter of seconds and at various depths. The cross-sectional slices are then rendered into a three-dimensional whole, giving an incredibly detailed anatomical picture that can be viewed from any angle.
The greatest effect on patient care will be speed and resolution, said Langlois.
The elderly, young children, those with breathing problems and others with difficulty remaining still or holding their breathes for extended lengths of time will benefit from the speed of the machine, Langlois said.
A head scan, for example, takes two revolutions - about 5 seconds, said Betsy Dearstyne, medical imaging director, and the entire body in about 30 seconds. Patients can processed in about 15 to 20 minutes total, compared to 45 minutes through the hospital's medical resonance imaging machine.
Dr. Andre Langlois |
She said the machine will operate 24 hours a day and is expected to take 30 patients a day. It went online Monday with three scheduled scans, to give the technicians time to adjust to the new software, but ended up doing nine patients. Another 15 were being scanned on Tuesday.
"We are giving our patients the best, fastest, clearest resolution," said Dearstyne.
The speed of the CT scanner allows it to take high-resolution shots of fast-moving organs, such as the heart; it also provides doctors with combination pictures of soft tissues, bone and blood vessels within minutes.
NARH's new CT scanner. |
Langlois said the scanner doesn't rule out the use of an MRI, which can be better at determining some tissue changes. A CT scan, however, can be used to quickly determine what's not wrong or if an MRI is required.
The higher resolution means faster and better diagnoses for patients, said Langlois.
"This will rule out a lot of invasive procedures," said Maria Basescu, vice president of external affairs. "That's one of the biggest patient advantages."
It also means that patients will have access to state-of-the-art diagnostics and "won't have to be sent down the road" to another facility, she said.
Looking to the future, the CT scanner may signal the end to cardiac catheterization and opens possibilities of "virtual" colonoscopies - both invasive procedures.
Hospital officials and radiologists had been talking for about a year on what next-generation CT would be best, said Dearstyne. Investing in the 64-slice scanner puts the hospital to forefront in CT technology in this region, Basescu said, since neither Berkshire Medical Center nor Southern Vermont Medical Center have this type of high-end machine.
Looking through the scanner. |
Dearstyne said Northern Berkshire Healthcare leaders could have chosen 16- or 32-slice technology, but instead chose to invest heavily in the best available and on par with large university and urban hospitals.
The hospital has been asking for support from the community because of lean times, said Langlois, and "this is a way of giving something back."
For more information: www.nbhealth.org . |
