From the November 2020 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The authors conducted the study with a micro CT scanner and believe it could potentially be adapted for medical scanners at some point in the future. Such an innovation, they say, could reduce the amount of radiation that millions of patients are exposed to, as about five million CT scans are performed annually in the U.K. and 80 million are performed in the U.S. CT scanning is believed to account for a quarter of Americans’ total exposure to radiation.
FDA approves mobile head CT from Siemens
Siemens Healthineers announced
FDA approval of a mobile CT scanner in early August that has the potential to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 in hospitals.
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The 32-slice SOMATOM On.site mobile head CT scanner can image critically ill patients in the ICU without requiring them to leave their bed. Standard CT systems require staff to transport these patients to the radiology department, which poses significant risks.
“The minute that patient leaves their room, they are no longer in their isolation bubble,” Dena Cunningham, business development manager for mobile CT at Siemens, told HCB News. “Now they’re introduced to infection risk while they’re being transported.”
Sometimes up to five people, including a physician, are needed to transport these patients to the radiology department for their daily head scans. Aside from the infection risk, patient lines and/or ventilation tubes could be pulled out during transportation.
Cunningham noted the importance of also reducing infection risk among other patients frequenting the radiology department and staff. Keeping critically ill patients in the ICU could dramatically lower that risk.
The SOMATOM On.site first debuted at the 2019 RSNA annual meeting, where Cunningham said a lot of hospitals expressed interest in the system. In light of the pandemic, interest has increased.
“There are a lot of hospitals that are on budget freezes right now, but because this is considered such a unique product that can help take care of patients better by keeping them in their room, they’re talking about using emergency funding from the hospitals to purchase something like this,” she added.
