REVOLUTIONARY DEVICE LOS ROBLES GETS $1.7 MILLION CT SCANNER.

Byline: Krystn Shrieve Staff Writer

THOUSAND OAKS - Los Robles Regional Medical Center recently installed a revolutionary, $1.7 million CT scanner that allows technicians to capture multiple images of a patient's anatomy six times faster than other machines.

The state-of-the-art Computerized Tomography scanner can capture an image in 60 seconds, a procedure that in the past may have taken 12 minutes, hospital officials said. The CT scanner, which has been in use at the hospital since December, will be demonstrated to the community in the hospital's radiology department Wednesday.

``This has almost revolutionized CT scanning,'' said Jim Jackson, the hospital's director of diagnostic imaging. ``We were in the process of purchasing a different scanner when the announcement came out that this was available and we immediately switched gears to bring it here.

``With this you can do a brain scan in practically six seconds rather than six minutes,'' he said.

There are 225 of these types of CT scanners in the world. This is the third in California, with the others at Stanford University Medical Center and Cedars Sinai Medical Center.

Chief CT Technologist Kellie Swigger said the ability to do CT scans more quickly has allowed the hospital to do more of the procedures and keep up more easily with trauma cases coming into the emergency room.

The faster speed, she said, also leads to more accurate pictures.

With the old CT scanner, patients had to hold their breath and remain still while the machine took several images. Now the patient holds his or her breath once while the computer takes one picture in which the doctor can see everything.

``In one picture, they may have taken a giant breath which put the lungs and organs were in one position. In another picture maybe they took a shallow breath and the organs were in a different position. It causes what we call misregistration and it's hard for us to know that we've seen everything,'' she said. ``Something small, like a lesion, could have been missed.''

Another benefit is that the new CT scanner minimizes patient discomfort.

``This is much easier for patients to tolerate because a procedure that used to take 15 minutes or a half hour now won't last long at all,'' Swigger said. ``If you come into the emergency room with an injury to your abdomen the last thing you want to have to do is keep holding your breath over and over.''

Swigger said the new CT scanner has also saved time in other areas of treatment. Doctors are doing CT scans rather than multiple X-rays because the scans can be manipulated to view any part of the body.

In some cases, CT scans have replaced more invasive angiograms which are procedures where an incision is made, a catheter is inserted and iodine is injected through the catheter into an artery before several X-rays are taken of the area.

With the CT scanner, Swigger said, the iodine is administered through an IV in the arm and a picture is taken.

The scan then can be manipulated to view individual arteries without having to insert a catheter. Also the iodine solution - which because it is dense shows up as white on the X-rays or the scan - has less time to dissipate.

``The contrast material, which is an iodine solution, is best seen when it first enters body,'' Swigger said. ``Within a minute the kidney starts to filter it out, but this allows us to inject it quickly and scan it quickly which means it's brighter and stands out more clearly on the screen.''

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

--The public can see the CT scanner from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the radiology department at Los Robles Regional Medical Center, 215 W. Janss Road in Thousand Oaks. Refreshments will be served. For reservations, call Kris Carraway-Bowman at [phone].

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Box: OPEN TO THE PUBLIC (see text)