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Why cut when you can CT?

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

State of the art technology now in use at Piedmont Fayette Hospital will allow some patients to avoid invasive diagnostic procedures entirely, hospital officials said Tuesday.

The hospital’s 64-slice Computer Tomography scanner provides a three-dimensional image in seconds, compared to several minutes, which also means diagnosis can occur much quicker than normal, said DiAnne Wallace, director of the hospital’s radiology imaging services.

Piedmont Fayette is just one of eight facilities in the country to have the new sophisticated SOMATOM Sensation CT scanner.

The scanner provides detailed pictures of the body and its organs, thanks to X-ray beams that rotate 360 degrees around the patient. Thousands of images can be captured in seconds, officials said, which is much quicker than current CT technology currently employed across the country, officials said.

In about four weeks, special software will be in that allows for four-dimensional images to be secured, and in many cases cardiologists and radiologists will be able to diagnose heart maladies within 10 minutes, Wallace said.

Cardiology is a good example of how patients can avoid invasive diagnostic procedures by use of the new CT scanner. Currently, patients needing angiograms have to be sedated so a catheter can be run up an artery to the heart itself, and dye is injected to make the results more visible, officials said.

But with the new scanner, no incision is necessary, and the patient can be alert and awake the whole time, Wallace said.

The 64-slice CT scanner will also aid in the detection of strokes, head injuries, herniated discs, fractures and bone and soft tissue damage in trauma patients, officials said. The fast turnaround time can lead to quicker intervention when necessary, Wallace noted.

The new scanner can also help detect heart disease, neurological problems and early stage cancers such as lung and colorectal cancer, which can lead to significant improvement of the patient’s survival chances, officials said.

The speed of the scanner will also help patients young and old who find it difficult to sit still for minutes at a time needed by CT scanners currently in use across the nation, Wallace said. Even some head scans can take about a minute, she noted.

The new CT scanner reduces the level of radiation patients are exposed to and increases patient comfort by eliminating the closed-in feeling associated with traditional CT scanners, officials said.

Hospital spokesperson Ryan Duffy attributed landing the specialized machine to leadership from the hospital’s physicians who looked into what the facility’s future diagnostics needs were.

“We’re the only 100-bed hospital in the country that even has this,” Duffy said.

Wallace said Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. gave the hospital a discount off the list price of $1.5 million because it was one of the first hospitals to adopt the technology. The price range fell into what the hospital was budgeting to pay for a new CT scanner that is currently “the gold standard,” Wallace said.

The technology was demonstrated to hospital officials at a recent convention and the results “blew us away,” Wallace said.

“We are proud to be one of only eight hospitals in the nation and the first in the metro Atlanta area to offer this imaging technology,” said Dr. Scott Faith, the hospital’s medical director of radiology. “The acquisition of this CT scanner is another example of Piedmont Fayette Hospital’s continued commitment to provide the most advanced healthcare to our patients.”