Scanner Appeal Help provide vital pieces of new kit
ALMOST 80,000 people have a CT or mobile x-ray at Cheltenham General and Gloucestershire Royal Hospitals every year.
The scans, which combine X-ray images from different body angles and computer processing for cross-sectional images of bones, blood vessels and soft tissues, are extremely helpful and can help diagnose anything from organ damage to cancer.
And the Cheltenham and Gloucester Hospitals Charity has launched its CT Scanner Appeal.
They want your help to raise a further £1.2m to help buy three new CT scanners and two digital mobile X-ray machines.
CT scanners were invented by British engineer Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI Laboratories and South Africaborn physicist Allan Cormack in 1972.
They were awarded a Nobel
Prize for their contributions to medicine and science.
One of the people patients may meet at a scan is Superintendent CT Radiographer Lily Bailey.
She said: “CT stands for computed tomography,” she said.
“A CT scanner is sometimes referred to as the doughnut or a Polo mint and it is a way of imaging the body very quickly. “It uses X-rays or radiation and we get hundreds of different slices that go through the body.
“We can reconstruct that into different fields in order to get 3D images. “It’s very quick, we can scan a patient in about five minutes which is great for trauma settings in which we need a quick diagnosis and we need to get the patient up to theatre and some treatment quickly.” Availability is required 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Demand is expected to rise by 18 per cent this year.
“If you were to come in for a scan as an outpatient in our department, you’d come to reception, you’d book in and they’d advise you to go into one of our waiting rooms,” she continued.
“You’ll be met by one of our assistants who will maybe give you a drink depending on what we’re scanning and get you changed into a gown.
“Then often with a lot of patients we give them contrast or a dye therefore we’d pop a little canula in and that stays in for the duration of the scan and up to 20 minutes after.
“One of the radiographers will come down into the waiting room and bring you to the scanner.
“We go through a questionnaire with you to make sure you’re safe to have the scan and the contrast and that’s your opportunity if you’ve got any questions you can ask us then.
“Then we do the scan which can take anywhere between five and 15 minutes and once the scan’s done we’ll usually pop them outside for 20 minutes just to make sure you’re OK after having an injection of the dye.
“After that, one of my colleagues or one of the assistants will come and take that canula out of your arm and if you’re happy then you are free to go.”