St. Vincent’s East’s multi-slice CT scanners, in position for two years, have helped lower the radiation exposure patients receive. “I’m excited about radiation safety and exposure, and the steps we are taking as a group and as a profession to try to minimize the amount of radiation to patients when we image them,” said Will Varnell, MD, chairman of radiology at St. Vincent’s East. Multi-slice scanners give radiologists an isotropic resolution, which is important for imaging and evaluating in multiple planes. St. Vincent’s East now has two SOMATOM® Sensation 40-slice scanners by Siemens. “It will make almost a complete revolution in one-third of a second.” Varnell said. “It’s much faster than previous scanners. Also, the resolution is one-third of a millimeter. It really does a very fine, detailed job of getting the data.” Varnell said that these scanners can “adjust their amount of radiation depending on the body part and the patient size. It can automatically sense it because it’s getting information back all the time. For the same exam, the amount of radiation exposure is about two-thirds less than from old-style scanners.” Varnell stated that the goal is to limit radiation exposure for adults and, particularly, children. “Children have significantly higher radiation exposure for an exam because they’re not as big, and they don’t have as much fat and tissue blocking the radiation from their organs. So, we try to do something called ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable). We’re trying to reduce the exposure to a point as low as we can and still make a diagnosis. We have a responsibility to not use too much radiation. We only want to use just enough.” Another important aspect of radiology at St. Vincent’s East is the new Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS), which was implemented at the hospital about a year ago. “PACS is a mechanism to store and display radiographic images throughout the hospital’s and doctor’s offices, and to allow the use of filmless-based radiology,” Varnell said. “Basically, PACS allows us to handle the large data sets, the large volumetric data sets, that we have, and allows us to look at them from an almost infinite variety of planes so that we can absolutely get the best images,” Varnell said. “Now we can see the pathology most clearly. It has really changed our lives. The ability to look at the images and to be able to have comparisons immediately available is very helpful. In fact, the computer calls up the most recent studies and puts them side by side. If we have certain ways we like to look at the studies and different ways of going through them, each user can set it so that it comes up that way each time.” PACS has streamlined St. Vincent’s East’s complicated and work-intensive process. “St. Vincent’s East has become the most efficient place to work because you come to work in the morning, and you can get through large amounts of patients very quickly,” Varnell said. Because doctors have access to the images at their own work stations, most consultations with radiologists are conducted via telephone. “Most doctors will call me on the phone with the images on their computers. It’s much more rapid, particularly in the ER where they are trying to get patients in and out. They can literally get the images on their computers as the patient is coming back from radiology. So it makes for a more efficient turnaround.” Varnell added, “Emageon (who provided the system), radiology and I/T did a really nice job of implementing it throughout the hospital and educating everyone about it. It really speeds up the diagnosis. The implementation went off without a hitch, and it’s such an unusual thing in medicine, to have everything go well. We’ve been very pleased with the system.” June 2008