Gifford Medical Center offers healthy cooking classesGifford Medical Center offers healthy cooking classesGifford Medical Center offers healthy cooking classesGifford offering heart patients new diagnostic technology Gifford offering heart patients
usic Box gives nursing home residents the gift of song
RANDOLPH, Nov. 14, 2007 – Patients undergoing cardiac studies in Gifford Medical Center’s Nuclear Medicine Department are getting faster – often life-saving – diagnoses thanks to a new, high-tech gamma camera at the Randolph hospital.
Nuclear medicine is a type of diagnostic imaging that shows the function and, in some cases, the structure of organs. “Nuclear medicine is functional imaging,” says Lyndell Davis, Gifford nuclear medicine supervisor. “Our studies show the doctor how the organ is working.”
The images are created by giving the patient a small amount of a radioactive substance, often called a “tracer.” The tracer is administered into the blood supply through an injection. Cameras, called gamma cameras, then detect the energy emitted from the tracer inside the body and transform the energy into images.
Gifford’s new camera, a Siemens e.cam dual Nuclear Medicine Department
head, is an upgrade from a refurbished 1995 Supervisor Lyndell Davis, left, and
model and provides medical professionals a Chief Nuclear Medicine Technician
higher quality image and patients greater Tera Russell use the new gamma
comfort. camera.
The new gamma camera has a wider, more comfortable imaging palate, or bed, suitable for patients weighing up to 400 pounds, is faster than the older machine and has a DVD player and screen that patients may watch while receiving scans.
“It’s state-of-the-art,” Davis says. “We can get the images to Fletcher Allen Health Care immediately and they can be read.”
The Nuclear Medicine Department at Gifford does a host of different scans with the new camera – bone, biliary, thyroid, renal, sentinel node, white blood cell and gastrointestinal bleed scans. For cardiac patients, however, the new technology has the most benefit.
Previously, scans showing movement, such as the beating of the heart, could not be transferred electronically to a larger tertiary care center to be read by a cardiologist and a radiologist there.
Fletcher Allen cardiologist Dr. Markus Meyer, who works at Gifford in his hometown of Randolph, rather read the studies twice weekly at Gifford, meaning patients’ doctors typically received results within 72 hours. With the new camera, cardiac studies done at Gifford’s Nuclear Medicine Department are now sent almost instantly to Fletcher Allen in Burlington, where they are read twice daily and results are back often in the same day.
The new equipment also allows the nuclear medicine technicians to provide doctors not only images but graphs as well, and includes what’s called “attenuation correction” – technology that reduces false positives in larger patients where excess tissue can create shadows on the images.
A generous gift
And the technology upgrades for cardiology patients don’t stop with the new gamma camera. The Cardiopulmonary Department at Gifford has a new cardiac stress testing system, thanks to the generosity of the Melissa Andrews Trust.
Melissa Andrews was a Northfield woman who lost a child to tuberculosis. When Andrews died in the 1920s, she left a small trust to be used to prevent and cure tuberculosis, which at the time was “the scourge,” says Mike Demasi, who with fellow Northfield resident Bill Lyon serves as trustee.
With tuberculosis now treatable with antibiotics, the trust’s scope has broadened over the years to include other respiratory care with Demasi and Lyon giving locally to Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin and Gifford in Randolph.
The trust previously gave Gifford pulmonary function test equipment that is still in use. This latest gift to Gifford of nearly $20,000 in cardiac stress testing equipment provided a needed upgrade and opens the door to electronic transmissions.
Cardiac stress tests are given independently, with echocardiograms or with cardiac studies from Gifford’s new gamma camera. Echocardiograms and cardiac studies image a patient’s heart at rest. Cardiac stress tests are performed on a treadmill with a computer reading the heart’s electrical activity through an electrocardiogram test for signs of decreased blood flow to the heart or heart disease.
A new treadmill and computer system were needed because the old equipment was wearing out. The new system will also soon allow the studies – or EKG tracings – to be transmitted electronically rather than simply printed out and given to doctors as they are now.
The new equipment already creates a clearer image. The ability to transfer material electronically will mean patients in need of emergency heart care will get that sooner, says Cardiopulmonary Department Manager and respiratory therapist Denise Rochman.
“I love it,” she says of the new equipment. “It’s great. We’re very thankful the Melissa Andrews Trust was able to donate this stress system to us as it’s helping us improve the level of care that our patients receive.
“It also enables patients to receive the highest quality of care locally without having to travel to a larger facility.”
Demasi and Lyon call theirs “fun work.” And note they think Andrews would be pleased with the good work they’ve done over the years on her trust’s behalf.
Gifford is certainly pleased.
“This is state-of-the-art technology that will significantly improve the quality of this imaging modality in order to better detect coronary artery disease, which is the most frequent cause of death,” says cardiologist Dr. Meyer of both the new stress test system and gamma camera.