NARHCTscanner Gets First Full Test

By Ryan Hutton, North Adams Transcript, Mass.

Aug. 5–NORTH ADAMS — The North Adams Regional Hospital had its first full test of a new computed tomography (CT) scanner, which requires only an injection to do what used to involve opening up the heart and inserting tubes.

The million-dollar Phillips Medical Systems scanner was leased by the hospital in November and on Monday had it’s first public demonstration on how it can take an accurate 64-slice scan of the heart in a matter of minutes.

The patient was NARH board of directors member Stephen Pagnotta, who needed a heart scan anyway and decided to volunteer himself to hone the hospital’s new machine.

“With my profession, a lot of people wonder if I even have a heart,” he said, laughing, after the procedure.

Betsy Dearstyne, director of medical imaging for NARH, explained that while the hospital staff was fully trained in the procedure, it has only done one active scan before and doing them more often refines the process.

“For every hospital or department that gets one, you have to do so many patients first to make sure that everything is being done perfectly,” she said. “It’s a matter of every time you do it you get better, every time the radiologist reads it, it becomes easier. It takes hours to reconstruct the image and it’s nice to run test patients first, so they won’t want the results in 24 hours.”

With the ability to do whole-body scans in seconds, the scanner beats the old 4-slice scanner

the hospital had been using and is especially helpful in diagnosing the elderly, the very young, and trauma patients. It makes a scan of a heart or lungs much more practical, because the scan can be timed between organ movements.

Pagnotta was given drugs to slow his heart rate to between 40 and 60 beats per minute (down from the average 70-75 bpm) so the imager could time in-between beats easier. Radiologist Dr. Andre Langlois explained that he scan is a far safer way to examine the heart than what was previously used.

“Cardiac CT is a non-invasive way of looking at the coronary arteries,” he said. “When we talk about non-invasive, we mean the diagnostic heart catheter, which we usually do by going through the femoral artery and sticking the catheter into the actually heart. This, on the other hand, is a procedure that takes only a few minutes. There’s some prep time, but from the patient’s standpoint, it’s a quicker examination and it’s a safer examination.”

Langlois added that the procedure is a preferable alternative for about 95 percent of the patients he sees. He said some people will always need a physical exam to properly assess the problem. Because weak radiation must be injected into the heart for the scanner to track, Langlois said there is some risk, but still far less than opening up someone’s heart and inserting tubes.

It takes anywhere from an hour to two hours to compile the scanned images into a usable picture, and as the process gets refined and technology improves, patients could be in and out in under 30 minutes with only another 15 to 30 minutes for compiling the image.

“We’re really in the beginning of the era of cardiac CTs. We’re going to be going much further with this in the future,” he said. “The trials for colon scans are almost completed, and it will probably be validated as a technique. Colon cancer has such a big impact, but we can prevent colon cancer. On a screening mammography you don’t prevent cancer, you detect it earlier. With a colonoscopy, you prevent, you take out the bad polyps so it’s more complicated.”

For Pagnotta, the experience not only proved he has a heart, but it compared favorably to a far more common doctor’s visit.

“Well I was here for a little over an hour, the staff did a great job telling what was going to happen accurately,” he said. “The process went smooth and the biggest discomfort came from not eating breakfast. A lot easier than going to the dentist.

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Copyright (c) 2008, North Adams Transcript, Mass.

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