Holy Cross Hospital has introduced the Philips Brilliance iCT 256-slice scanner, which offers leading-edge diagnostic advances to locate clots with unprecedented accuracy and conduct minimally invasive procedures to treat a wide range of clinical problems including stroke, carotid artery disease, brain aneurysms and other vascular disorders.
Compared to the average 64-slice scanner, the state-of-the-art device has double the coverage and four times the slices for ultrafast acquisition.
For the comprehensive stroke center at Holy Cross, the breakthrough CT technology means the exact time of a stroke can be estimated and brain areas that can be recovered with intervention can be mapped. This technology guides acute removal of the occluding blood clot with the promise of a much better outcome for more than half of the patients that wake up with the signs of a severe stroke.Up to now, if the onset of a stroke was not witnessed, many stroke patients were not eligible for a clot removal procedure because there were no tools to tell when the stroke happened, how much brain can be saved with such a procedure and what risk there might be of bleeding which can occur if the procedure is done too late.
The 256-slice scanner also offers new advances for cardiac care with smart technology that senses and adapts to the patient’s heart beat. The new technology allows for imaging studies to be acquired in the equivalent of a couple of heart beats.