TheBoss
Moderator
Registered: 29/04/07
Posts: 22
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Reply with quote | #1 |
Upon my last visit to the USA I was amazed to see that many departments regularly use cardiac CT to determine Coronary Heart Disease. Cardiologists are now being trained in how to read CT's and several sites are actually installing scanners in their departments. In the UK and Australia this technology has been slow to take off.
Does your department have cardiac CT or is it in the pipeline? What are some of the challenges you face with implementing this new technology?
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jeandy
Registered: 07/05/07
Posts: 5
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Reply with quote | #2 |
Hello from Jeanette at Geelong Victoria Australia.
Cardiac CT is likely to be here in October at Geelong. The out patient CT will be performed in Medical imaging and sent via digital technology (PACS) to our system in the lab for post processing by our cardiac radiographers. There may be some prospective processing but this may not be as accurate. The cardiologist will then read the processed images remotely. 64 slice is required. CT technology was viewed as useful but needed to develop before our cardiology department was willing to commit. Our Director has been following this technology for some time. We do not believe that this will result in less angiography as it will be used in very select patients in an outpatient setting.
Jeanette
UNM Geelong Hospital/Barwon Health
Cardiac Catheterisation
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ferretpants
Moderator
Registered: 01/05/07
Posts: 31
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Reply with quote | #3 |
We have a 64 slicer and yeh the 3-D pics are very pretty but the patient has to be perfect to get perfect pics. If your patient even has a sniff of arrythmia then you can expect a crap scan.
Same goes for the heart rate, ideally you need it down around 60-70 bpm, so we find we are feeding 50-100 mg of beta blockers to three quarters of our patients b4 they enter the scanner.
The dose is the same if not more compared to a diagnostic coronary angio on the Innova 2100.
The quality is still inferior to a cath lab angio.
Artefact from pacing/defib wires inevitably ruins your images too.
So whats it good for?
Well all those hard to find grafts/anomalous natives and patients with absolutely no access. (We are also finding some outside cardiologists referring lots of their private patients  wonder why?)
I am yet to be convinced it will supercede angio labs.
Lets see what the 512 scanner can do.............
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