By Karissa Nedeau
WHITTIER – Doctors at Whittier Hospital Medical Center are all heart, and now they can see yours more clearly. They recently unveiled a new technology that makes this possible – the Toshiba Aquilion 64 multidetector row computer tomography scanner.
“CT is a quick look into the body. It’s a very non-invasive, simple procedure. The patient lies down on the table for a few minutes, and it tells us so much information. It’s definitely a valuable tool,” said Brandon Muse, director of radiology services at Whittier Hospital.
There are an array of benefits available with the $1.2 million 64- slice CT, which works by spinning an X-ray tube around the patient passing through on the table.
“(There are) faster scan times, you can evaluate the heart a little bit better, and the resolution is twice as good,” Muse said.
“The bottom line is resolution and speed, and as you go up in the slices you get more of both. If you’re going to do cardiac, you need the speed because otherwise it gets blurry,” added Robin Lee, director of cardiology and radiology at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital.
This new CT scanner is available to anyone with a referral or doctor’s order. It is used on everyone from children to seniors, Muse said, although they do limit its use on children because of radiation exposure.
“In a typical year, a person would get about three to four millisieverts of radiation, and they get about eight to nine in this procedure,” Muse said, although he emphasized that the benefits far outweigh the risks.
Whittier Hospital waited a couple of years to buy the equipment because of limited availability and space issues.
“We didn’t have somewhere to put it. But we freed up some space and the cost was right at the time,” Muse said.
The first week the new equipment was introduced, a patient was able to avoid a more invasive procedure because of the new acquisition.
“It would have taken about an hour and a half to two hours, but the patient was on the table for under five minutes and we got excellent results,” Muse said.
The 64-slice machine works very quickly in comparison with many current CT scanners, such as the Philips Brilliance 6 at the Whittier Imaging Center, which is able to take just six slices in one revolution, according to Pam Walton, a cat scan technologist at the center.
Just two to three weeks ago, PIH installed its own dual source CT scanner, which is essentially a 128-slice, according to Lee. He added that companies such as Siemens and Toshiba are already working on advances reaching up to 256 slices.
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(c) 2008 Whittier Daily News. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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