Fundraiser to upgrade radiology suite At hospital
Current site, built in 2005, is in need of an upgrade and some new equipment
Marilyn Blondeau was in agony for years after the van she was driving hit black ice and rolled five times just outside of Regina.
“I was left suspended in my seatbelt dangling upside down,” said Blondeau. “The seatbelt saved my life. I got myself out and I didn’t have any broken bones, but I was really banged up. I’m lucky to be alive.”
Wracked by ongoing lower back and shoulder pain, the working mother of three school-aged children got a further blow when her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
After the 1997 crash, Blondeau got temporary relief from the pain through physiotherapy, massage therapy and reflexology.
“The pain just got worse and worse,” she said. “I had trouble getting down into my lower cupboards under my sink. I was just doing less and less and kind of suffering it out.”
The pain became intolerable so a specialist recommended she have a facet rhizotomy, a minimally invasive technique done at Regina General Hospital’s interventional radiology suite (IR Suite).
Facet joints are joints in the spine that make a back flexible, allowing for bending and twisting. Due to trauma, the aging process or aggressive physical work, the joints can degenerate and develop osteoarthritis.
“When that happens the joints give rise to pain, which is carried by your nerves to your brain,” said Dr. Kunal Goyal, department head of medical imaging for Saskatchewan Health Authority Regina. “Facet joints, unlike your hip or knee joints, cannot be replaced.”
The only treatment is rhizotomy, burning the nerves that connect the facet joints to the brain.
“You do not take the cause of the pain away, but you stop the person from perceiving the pain,” Goyal said.
Before the rhizotomy is done, a piece of medical equipment called a C-ARM, for its shape, and X-ray guidance are used to inject the joints with steroids and freezing.
“If that works, we know then the patient’s pain is coming out of the facet joint, and then we would embark on the rhizotomy,” Goyal said.
With the C-ARM machine and X-ray guidance, the radiologist targets the nerves supplying the facet joints.
“We selectively burn specific spots ensuring there are no complications,” Goyal said.
Over the past five years, there’s been a spike in the number of procedures done to relieve chronic pain, he noted. Additionally, many procedures, such as angiograms to examine blood vessels and blood flow, are done in the IR Suite.
It’s also the place where cancer patients are treated for pain and receive targeted chemotherapy.
“The third piece of work we do is on patients who have bleeding inside their body either because of trauma or spontaneous bleeding,” Goyal said. “Our job is to go in and stop the bleeding.”
Since having the rhizotomy two years ago, Blondeau is now enjoying retirement.
“The relief was almost immediate,” she said. “I can curl again. I can lift my grandchildren and carry them. It’s changed my life for the better.”
The IR suite, along with other diagnostic imaging technology, is the focus of the Hospitals of Regina Foundation’s fundraising campaign this year.
Blondeau hopes residents will support the campaign.
“They do so many procedures in there it’s just unreal,” she said. “You just don’t realize all that they do for people. My case is probably minor compared to some emergency situations. They save lives.”
The foundation is committing $5 million towards improvements at the hospitals, including $2.2 million for a new IR suite at the General Hospital, said Dino Sophocleous, president and CEO.
The suite is basically an operating room with its own imaging systems that are used for minimally invasive surgeries, Sophocleous said.
“That’s very important because it minimizes the time of stay for patients in hospitals. It also minimizes the opportunity for infections and it costs the system way less,” he said.
Last year, more than 5,200 procedures were performed in Regina’s IR suite.
“The one that we have right now dates back to 2005 ... We’re due for an upgrade,” Sophocleous said.
When the new IR suite and equipment are in place, Goyal hopes treatments will be quicker and more patients will be seen.
“The quality of the treatment will still be the same because we’re doing quality work, but it’s taking longer to do it,” he said.