District officially gets CT scanner

By Duane Hicks
Staff writer

“It was well worth the wait.”
It was a phrase heard time and again last Thursday afternoon as more than 100 district residents celebrated the new CT scanner during a grand-opening ceremony at La Verendrye Hospital.
“It’s well-needed here,” said Sam Arbuckle, adding having the CT scanner in Rainy River District really helps those who have had to, or would have to, travel to Thunder Bay or Winnipeg to access such a service.
“It’s not only the travel,” noted Arbuckle. “When you get there, you have to stay overnight. It’s the time it takes.
“You could drive to Winnipeg in four hours, but you try and get a CT scan, you’re there for eight hours.”
Harry Jones agreed it’s very difficult to go elsewhere for a CT scan, get it done, and then return home in the same day.
“I’ve had to go away for two or three scans. I think it’s wonderful,” echoed June Keddie, adding the fact the CT scanner became a reality here is “amazing for a small community.”
“We always seem to pull together here,” she enthused. “It’s a good place to live and a good hospital. I’ve had all my surgery at the hospital here, and it’s just been great.”
“I think it’s wonderful. People don’t realize until they need it how lucky they are to be able to access it, and not have to travel,” said La Vallee Reeve Emily Watson, a former Riverside board member and current president of the Rainy River District Municipal Association.
“The service is wonderful. It’s close to home, it’s immediate, and I think people are so lucky to have it here.”
The grand opening also was a chance for the public to learn more about the Toshiba Aquilion 64-slice CT scanner now benefitting district patients. This included viewing of a brief video featuring the CT scanner in action, narrated by X-ray/ultrasound technologist Bernie Rittau, and a tour of the CT scanning room, with explanations provided by X-ray technologists Mark Addison and Tiffany Dolyny, along with Toshiba representative Nick Myskos.
The first patient was scanned here Aug. 5, with more than 200 patients having used it since then.
Currently, the diagnostic imaging staff at La Verendrye is conducting about five-eight scans a day. The CT scanner is used to look at everything from strokes to abnormalities in the abdomen and pelvis.
CT (or computed tomography) is a medical imaging method in which digital geometry processing is used to generate a three-dimensional image of the inside of an object from a large series of two-dimensional X-ray images taken around a single axis of rotation.
In simplest terms, a patient is injected with a dye and then lies down on a wide bed as the gantry (the doughnut-shaped piece containing the imaging equipment) spins around them at high speed.
The model incorporates leading-edge technology and ergonomic features to speed productivity while increasing patient comfort. Scanning is very fast (it usually only takes 10 seconds) and if the desired images are found in an shorter time, the scanning process can be stopped even sooner.
(Since the scanning involves exposure to radiation, the amount of radiation the patient has to be exposed to is minimized if at all possible. A wide variety of dose control tools help minimize radiation exposure to patients and staff by up to 40 percent compared with older CT scanners).
The scanning process enables technologists to capture numerous detailed images—in fact, 64 simultaneous “slices” only 0.5 mm thick—of the area being scanned to enable the most accurate diagnosis of whatever the medical situation may warrant.
The digital information is transferred instantly to computers in the adjoining control room. This data then can be manipulated in whatever way necessary for the radiologist to be able to read the images and create a report about what appears to be wrong with the patient.
“I’ve seen some of the pictures here that have just floored me,” noted Addison. “In general X-ray work, you might see a fracture in the back, somewhere in the spine, and it may be visible or it may not, but certainly not really clearly. When you’ve got a CT scan to take a look at it, it stands out like a beacon.
“It’s incredible the difference it makes in situations like that because then you know something’s got to be done and it’s got to be done in a hurry.