Two months ago, when a doctor at the Tyrone Hospital would call for a CT scan, the sighs would erupt. That would mean to get the patient all dressed up in warm clothing, situate the patient needing the scan in a wheelchair, and traveling outside the hospital walls more than 50 yards to the Tyrone Diagnostic Center where the scanner was located.
\nThat all changed Jan. 6 when a new computerized tomography scanner was installed in the radiology department within the hospital. It is located adjacent to the emergency room.
\nAccording to the hospital\u2019s director of marketing and public relations Theresa Yanchetz, the current location allows patients easier access to the service.
\nThe machine was purchased from GE Medical Systems for $500,000, and thanks to the fundraising efforts of the Tyrone Hospital Development Council, donated funds were used to help construct and prepare a special room in which to house the unit.
\n\u201cIn fiscal year 2002-03, the CT scanner is the council\u2019s target project,\u201d said Yanchetz. \u201cTo date, $18,723.50 has been donated to the CT project. The $18,723.50 represents donations from a variety of individuals, area businesses and social and civic organizations.\u201d
\nAccording to Bernard DiGiacobbe, M.S., radiologist at the hospital, the scanner makes use of highly sensitive x-rays and computers to provide detailed pictures of the inside of the body.
\n\u201cThe pictures show cross sectional images of the body and are used to diagnose disease process through changes in anatomy,\u201d said DiGiacobbe. \u201cDoctors use CT to diagnose a whole spectrum of diseases. That is why it is so popular.\u201d
\nRadiologic technologists at Tyrone Hospital said one of the features of CT is that it photographs the inside of the body in slices. They used an example of a loaf of sliced bread to help explain this multi-slice feature.
\n\u201cIf you look at a loaf of sliced bread, you see the whole loaf. You can\u2019t really see what is inside unless you lift up and look at each individual slice.\u201d
\nThe pictures the new scanner takes are enhanced in that the multi-sliced photos would look more like a stretched out Slinky as compared to the loaf of sliced bread. The difference is that spiral feature and the associated overlap.
\nInstead of pauses moving from one photo to the next, the spiral feature allows more information to be captured as the scanner moves from photo to photo.
\n\u201cThat overlap feature allows for a broader range of CT studies,\u201d said DiGiacobbe.
\nAccording to Yanchetz, the technically advanced, high-speed scanner enhances the hospital\u2019s diagnostic imaging capabilities, thus bringing another positive to the community of Tyrone and surrounding areas.
\n\u201cThe new scanner completes a scan more quickly and generates pictures much faster,\u201d said Yanchetz. \u201cThe speed of the scanner means patients are in and out more quickly.\u201d
\nAccording to radiologic technologists, a scan that once took 45 minutes to complete can now be done in eight minutes or less. They said it is convenient for people in the community to access this type of testing here locally rather than having to travel out of the area for the scans.
\nYanchetz said any physician at the hospital can order a scan to obtain the vital information needed to diagnose a patient. Currently, there are 71 medical staff members affiliated with Tyrone Hospital; however, only five hospital radiologists have been trained on the new unit.
\n\u201cGE application specialists came to the hospital to do the training,\u201d said Yanchetz, noting that each of the radiologists that were trained already had extensive training with the operation of CT scanners. \u201cThe training by GE was to familiarize the technologists with the new unit.\u201d
\nBut what is such a small hospital like Tyrone doing with such an advanced piece of equipment?
\nThomas Bartlett, the hospital\u2019s chief executive office, said it\u2019s not rare for a small institution like Tyrone Hospital to have such a machine.
\n\u201cIt would have been rare many, many years ago when CT technology was new to the healthcare industry,\u201d said Bartlett. \u201cThese days, CT scanning is so integrated into hospital radiology departments, it has become a standard of care.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two months ago, when a doctor at the Tyrone Hospital would call for a CT scan, the sighs would erupt. That would mean to get the patient all dressed up in warm clothing, situate the patient needing the scan in a wheelchair, and traveling outside the hospital walls more than 50 yards to the Tyrone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}