Cardiac CT Case for Support

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CARDIAC CT CASE FOR SUPPORT

NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR HEART AND VASCULAR SERVICES For more than 40 years, Mission Heart has been a regional leader in cardiothoracic surgery and heart care. Committed to high-quality and superior outcomes, our award-winning staff has many years of specialized clinical experience, and is dedicated to caring for patients with skill and compassion. Recently, Mission Heart has been recognized by Truven Health Analytics (a leading authority on clinical quality) as a “Top 50 Cardiovascular Hospital” for the tenth time. Only five hospitals in the United States have been named among the Top 50 Cardiovascular Hospital list more times than Mission Heart.

In the current era of medicine, we have become increasingly reliant upon technology - particularly imaging - to aid in diagnosing and treating many disease states. This has never been more true than in cardiology. Cardiac imaging has advanced greatly in the past decade, particularly cardiac computed tomography (cardiac CT). The cardiac CT technology currently available at Mission is several generations old.

The addition of a 256-slice CT scanner would provide advantages to both the patient and provider.

Superior image quality will allow for more certainty in diagnosis and help to ensure excellent patient outcomes. The newest technology will allow for better patient safety, less exposure to radiation, lower doses of contrast, and decreased scan times.

The 256-slice CT scanner takes only one second to scan the entire heart, providing more information with each rotation. The existing CT technology at Mission Health takes much longer to capture the heart’s image and requires the administration of medications to slow the heart rate to get an accurate picture. Patients do not need to hold their breath during the scan with the 256-slice CT. Many patients struggle to maintain an adequate breath hold, which results in unusable images and possible need to repeat the scan. An additional benefit is that the 256-slice CT scanner can give cardiologists a picture of the human heart with 60 percent less radiation exposure than older CT scan technology on average, and in some patients, greater than 90 percent reduction.

This state-of-the-art technology also has particular value in diagnosing coronary artery disease and patients with chest pain. Because of more accurate diagnoses many patients can be spared the need for further invasive procedures such as coronary angiography.

Cardiac CT has become the cornerstone for pre-procedural evaluation for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) and other so called “structural heart “ procedures. Accurate assessment of patient-specific characteristics is imperative to ensure the best possible procedural outcome.

THE IMPACT ON PEDIATRIC CARDIOLOGY

Currently Mission has 16- and 64-slice CT machines within all its pediatric facilities. The addition of a 256-slice CT scanner would be available to both the adult and pediatric population. The pediatric population has unique needs. Mission Health currently employs either general anesthesia or conscious sedation, in most of our pediatric patients under ten years old, especially when a gated study is necessary. With a faster scanner, we could perform most studies without any sedation which would reduce patient risk, unnecessary staff/resource utilization, and time that the patient spends in the scanner.

As with the adult population, there would be a reduction in radiation dosages, especially in gated scans. Gated scans use selective acquisition of cardiac function information at specific points in the cardiac cycle. Currently we have to primarily use retrospective gating, which necessitates much higher radiation doses than prospective gating. High-quality scans can be successfully accomplished at higher heart rates using prospective gating. However, we can only utilize prospective gating at higher heart rates with a faster scanner.

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

Mission is in need of funding to purchase the 256-slice CT scanner. A gift of $1.88M would provide for the purchase and installation of the technology that would be utilized by approximately 500 cardiac patients per year.

“The new scanner creates the opportunity to diagnose and treat more children locally by producing pertinent high-quality, detailed data with minimal radiation and side effects.�

- Dr. Brad Friedman