New evening hours for MRI patients
Fort Hamilton Hospital has extended evening hours for patients who need to have MRI. Appointments can be scheduled by calling 513-867-2382.
HAMILTON — The purchase of a multi-purpose diagnostic scanner at the Fort Hamilton Hospital promises to be a great convenience for area patients.
The hospitals’s new Philips GEMINI TruFlight PET/CT system combines Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Computed Tomography imaging technologies in one scanner, and is the only one of its kind in a permanent location in the Cincinnati area.
“Other hospitals have purchased mobile units that they can move from hospital to hospital,” said hospital spokesperson Marielou Vierling. “Christ Hospital and University Hospital share one, and if you’ve had to have a PET scan, you’d have to call and find out where it was.”
PET/CT has been shown to provide exceptional performance for many applications, including cancer, cardiology and brain imaging.
“We’re very pleased to be able to offer our patients this important advancement in diagnostic imaging,” said senior vice president Lynn Oswald in a press release. “The system is advantageous in many ways. It allows us to merge PET and CT when needed, yet operates equally well for stand-alone PET or CT exams.”
In some cases, PET renders critical diagnostic information that other imaging tests may not provide and can reduce the overall cost of care, Vierling said.
“While other techniques such as X-ray or CT show structural anatomy, PET shows metabolic activity within the body,” she said. “The most common applications of PET in cancer patients are for aiding diagnosis when other tests are inconclusive, staging the extent of cancer, and detecting recurrent disease before it escalates or spreads.”
The system features a unique open gantry that promotes patient comfort and allows staff to interact with the patient during the scan.
“Some patients are apprehensive about the full enclosure of a traditional imaging gantry, so this system is a huge improvement toward helping patients relax and feel more comfortable,” said medical director Linda Reilman. “We find that patients really appreciate being able to see and talk to our technologists while on the table.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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