WWW arkcity.net

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer

Radiology technologists at South Central Kansas Regional Medical Center have noticed an increase in work load since a new 16-slice CAT scanner was started up on Monday.

And their work load is likely to increase even more.

The new machine provides sharper scans, faster, than the one it replaced. It also can be used for more functions. After further training scheduled in October, local medical personnel will be able to perform heart work and virtual colonoscopies using the new CAT scanner, officials say.

"I see no end in sight," said Candy Allen, radiology technologist, on Thursday.

Allen demonstrated the new CAT scanner for medical staff and members of the SCKRMC board of trustees in two sessions on Thursday. In between the sessions, she and fellow technologist Liana Dubach performed 10 procedures using the machine.

The $750,000 machine provides Ark City patients "state-of-the-art" technology that typically is available only in larger cities, such as Ponca City or Wichita, hospital officials say.

"This is a big deal for this size of community and this size of hospital," Joe Jirinec, hospital chief executive officer, said today.

The 16-slice CAT scanner replaces a four-slice machine that SCKRMC acquired last August, Jirinec said. The hospital leased that machine, which was installed in a trailer parked outside the hospital.

"That's gone now," he said. "We knew when we got it that the CT (CAT scanner) would be replaced once we were in a financial position to buy the new one."

The hospital did not purchase the new machine outright, but has acquired it through a lease-to-buy agreement, Jirinec said.

CAT scanners long have been the "modality of choice" for emergency care, said Clayton Pappan, director of marketing for SCKRMC.

"The CT provides physicians information quickly on patients who come in and don't know what's wrong," Pappan said. "Doctors use the information to diagnose the problem, and they can do so using this machine in seconds."

Pappan described how the CAT scanner works: Patients are placed on a table and and moved through a doughnut shaped scanner while an X-ray beam is projected through the cross-sections of their anatomy. The X-ray energy passes through the patient and is recorded on electric detectors in the scanner. That information is sent to a computer that reconstructs it into an image.

At the afternoon demonstration Thursday, Allen showed images from the new machine on one computer and images from the previous, four-slice scanner on another. The images from the new device were much sharper, showing more detail.

"It's like the difference between digital pictures made up of one million pixels compared to 500 pixels," Jirinec said. "Which would you choose to print in the newspaper?"

Using the computer, technicians can remove different layers inside the body to hone in on one particular part of the anatomy. For instance, one image shown at the demonstration showed only a patient's aorta and arteries from the stomach to the thighs. Using the computer, the image could be rotated.

After the technicians undergo training in early October, the CAT scanner can be used to perform "non invasive" colonoscopies, hospital officials said.

It's called a virtual colonoscopy because no instruments go through a patient's insides, Jirinec said. "(Technicians can) take a tour all the way through the colon without any intrusion," he said.

The actual scan for the colonoscopy will take only seconds, Pappan added. Only a small tube is involved in the procedure.