New hospital scanners quickly into action
ALMOST £2m.-worth of new equipment was unveiled at the hospital yesterday.
Ribbons were cut around the new CT and SPECT-CT scanners which have been in place at the PEH for the last two weeks.
The total investment of the new equipment was around £2m., with the CT scanner costing £1.1m. and the SPECT-CT costing £850,000.
Replacing the old CT scanner – which had been in place at the hospital for 12 years – the new one caters for a greater variety of scans, particularly cardiac scans, for which islanders were normally referred off-island.
‘It’s a lovely machine and completes scans very quickly – some in under a second,’ CT superintendent Richard Taylor said.
CT scans make use of computer-processed combinations of many X-ray measurements taken from different angles to produce cross-sectional images of specific areas of a scanned object, allowing medical professionals to see inside the body without cutting.
‘We use CT scanners every day, with many referrals from the Emergency Department so it’s great to have such a key piece of equipment operational 24/7,’ Mr Taylor said.
Head of clinical support services Martin Peacock said the new CT scanner produces much better quality results than the old one.
‘CT scans are something we would like to always have access to as they are used in emergency situations.
‘Having the new SPECT-CT scanner, which replaces the old gamma camera, means we can do nuclear medicine imaging as well as CT scans, meaning we have a resilient CT service should anything happen to the main CT scanner.’
Guernsey has the only nuclear medicine facility in the Channel Islands and would like to continue to offer this service to Jersey.
