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Hospital Unveiling 64-Slice CT Scanner

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: July 5, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - NEW PORT RICHEY - In medical matters, the phrase "it's what's inside that counts" refers to more than the virtues of a sterling personality. It can often have life-or-death implications, especially when it comes to heart health issues.

Morton Plant North Bay Hospital recently acquired a piece of equipment that allows doctors to see what's going on inside their patients more quickly and more thoroughly than ever before, with less discomfort for the patient.

The hospital recently purchased the SOMATOM Sensation Cardiac 64, one of the fastest computed tomography scanners on the market.

"As part of our commitment to providing the best in health care, this cutting-edge technology gives the Pasco Community access to the fastest, most effective scanning system available," Morton Plant North Bay Hospital Chief Operating Officer John Couris said in a press release. "The 64-slice CT helps pinpoint disease earlier and gives doctors more information to plan and track appropriate treatment."

A CT scanner circles around the patient, taking X-rays of the same part of the body from several different angles, or "slices" of the circle, at once. A computer then takes the data from all the images and combining them into a three-dimensional image of the targeted area. The more angles that can be shot at the same time, and the faster they are taken, the clearer and more detailed the final image.

Siemens Medical Solutions introduced the SOMATOM Sensation Cardiac 64 to the medical profession in 2004.

As the name implies, it take 64 images simultaneously. That technological achievement was a breakthrough in applying CT technology to cardiac care.

"We went from a two-slice scanner, we upgraded to a 40," Morton Plant North Bay Hospital radiologist John Young said. "The 40-slice scanner is not capable of doing cardiac."

It's an issue of movement, Young explained. No matter how still a patient is, the heart keeps beating, which has always made CT scanning useless until now. With the new scanner, patients are given a combination of the beta-blocker drug Lopressor and nitroglycerin to bring down the heart rate. When it is slowed enough, the machine can calibrate itself to the rhythm of the heartbeat.

For patients, being able to have their hearts and blood vessels examined by CT scan is a major breakthrough in both time and comfort. Until now, the best method for examination of the heart and blood vessels was with a heart catheterization, in which a camera is inserted into the body through an incision at the groin and pushed up to the heart.

With catheterization, preparation, the procedure, and recovery from anesthesia are a daylong process, generally followed by two to three days recuperation. With the CT scan, the noninvasive procedure is done in less than two hours. Doctors can have a color 3-D model with measurements in moments that in some ways is better than looking at the real thing, as cardiologist Dr. Sudhir Agarwhal demonstrated with an image of a patient's heart.

"Here you can look from any angle, you can look inside out, you can look at look at a single artery; it's amazing," Agarwhal said. "You can magnify, you can do a lot of things to make a better picture."

When standard heart tests come back inconclusive, Agarwhal said, or when a patient complains of chest pains but seems to otherwise be a low risk candidate for heart disease, this test can determine whether or not there is a hidden problem. One of the scanners biggest advantages is it can take 3-D scans of individual arteries.

It is also a good tool, Agarwhal said, when time is of the essence, and it's unclear how much time there is.

When people come to the emergency room with chest pain, they could be suffering from a number of conditions, Agarwhal said, including a heart attack, blood clot in the lungs or a tearing in one of the body's main blood vessels, called an aortic dissection.

"By doing this test, you can look at all three," he said.

Competing companies are literally improving CT technology at an exponential rate. In 2007, Toshiba unveiled a 320-slice scanner that will eventually become the gold standard.

For the time being, Couris said, the 64-slice scanner gives Morton Plant North Bay Hospital the means to more quickly diagnose, begin treatment and possibly stave off heart attacks while reducing patient discomfort, expense and the need for overnight hospital stays.

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