St. Stanislaus School benefit, 9 to 4 in Kolbe Hall, Adams. Bake sale, snack bar, games, Chinese auctions, money raffle, crafts, and pierogi.
Blackinton Union Church, 1373 Massachusetts Ave., North Adams; 10 to 2. Crafts table, bake sale, Chinese auction, the Christmas table, and kid's grab bag. Lunch $4, $2 kids.
First Congregational Church, North Adams, 9-2.
Nov. 28 Becket Federated Church, Route 8, holiday bazaar from 9-3. Lunch, crafts, baked goods, holiday and other items. Information: Mary Peltier, Parish House, 413-623-5217.
Dec. 5
Holiday Fair at First Congregational Church, 25 Park Place, Lee, from 10 to 3; handcrafted items, raffles, children's shop, bake sale, cut Christmas trees and lunch from 11 to 1. Includes angel-themed goods from SERRV. Information, 413-243-1033 or www.ucc-lee.org.
Dec. 12-13
North Adams Country Club, crafts 9-4; food from That's a Wrap from 11-2. Information: Sheryl Morehouse at 413-822-3329.
Planning a bazaar this season? Submit information to info@iberkshires.com to have it listed here.
We're trying out blogs to offer shorter, easy-to-find news. Let us know what you think.
Send press releases and announcements to info@iberkshires.com. Need to contact someone at iBerkshires? Here's how.
Mammography Dispute The government's issued controversial new guidelines stating that women shouldn't get annual mammograms until age 50, rather than age 40.
iBerkshires will be meeting with local medical experts Monday. Have a question you'd like answered on this issue? Send it info@iberkshires.com with "mammogram" in the subject line.
By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff 07:28PM / Wednesday, August 06, 2008
NORTH ADAMS — The promise posed by North Adams Regional Hospital's state-of-the-art CT scanner was exposed Monday when the million-dollar device focused on the heart of Stephen N. Pagnotta.
"People were kidding me that, given my profession, they wanted to find out if there was a heart," joked the local attorney and chairman of Northern Berkshire Healthcare's board of trustees.
Joking aside, the picture of Pagnotta's heart (yes, there is one) means the machine can now be used to replace, in most instances, cardiac catheterization to determine the presence of heart disease.
The computed tomography, or CT, scanner was installed last November and has processed some 5,000 scans of various parts of the body. Monday was the first time the machine was used to snap X-rays of a beating heart.
The Phillips Medical Systems scanner takes 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 rendered into a three-dimensional picture that can be rotated and examined on a computer.
Like cardiac catheterization, the patient is injected with a dye that allows the doctor see parts of the heart. She is also given a drug that slows and steadies the heartbeat so the scanner can take a snapshot of the heart constricting and relaxing.
The patient lies on platform, is moved through the doughnut-shaped machine ... and that's pretty much it.
A catheterization, on the other hand, is an invasive process that requires a hollow tube be inserted through a blood vessel in the groin or arm and up into the aorta of the heart. The patient may be awake through the procedure, but it takes time and requires a recovery period. While considered very safe, there's still risk of infection, pain, blood clots, angina or irregular heartbeat and, in rare cases, stroke.
"From the patient's standpoint, it's a much, much easier examination, it's a safer examination," Dr. Andre Langlois, a radiologist at the hospital, said of the CT scan. But, he added, "It's not an examination at this time that can be done on all patients ... but this will be able to be used for a relatively large portion of the patients."
Someone with acute pain who needs to be treated immediately with a stent and certain other conditions, such as erratic heartbeat, aren't likely candidates; and there is still a slight risk, from radiation or reaction to the contrast dye.
"We want to be able to assess the coronary arteries and maybe replace some other tests that may not be needed because this is probably a more robust technique to find out if somebody has heart disease," said Langlois. "We're really at the beginning of cardiac CT."
"It was easier than going to the dentist and just about any other type of procedure you could have done at the hospital," said Pagnotta, adding "the biggest discomfort was not eating breakfast."
Radiology technician Christopher Wheeler looks over scanning options on his monitor at North Adams Regional Hospital.
Radiology technician Christopher Wheeler attended a weeklong seminar on cardiac scans recently in Cleveland.
"This is just sort of a setup, but the setup's got to be perfect," said Wheeler as he peered at an X-ray of Pagnotta's chest on his monitor. Then, in seconds, the screen filled separate slides of semi-circles of white — the contrast dye outlining tissues and structures in Pagnotta's heart. The huge amount of data takes time to collate; Wheeler estimated about two hours to get a good picture of the heart. As the technicians gain experience, that time will shorten considerably.
The cardiac tests will be done on volunteers at first to allow doctors and technicians time to perfect their expertise in scanning and reading the results before patients go through the process.
"I thought this was a pretty neat opportunity and to be able to help them out," said Pagnotta. "You don't often get high-tech medicine like this for the asking."
