Jackson Health System, which is continually striving to advance the frontiers of medicine to improve its quality of care, is once again providing an innovative technology. Holtz Childrens Hospital is the first hospital in the world to use a new, CereTom portable CT scan technology to obtain images of pediatric patients in its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit thus avoiding moving the critically ill children to the radiology department for tests.
The CereTom CT from NeuroLogica Corp. is a compact, portable, multi-slice scanner being used in a few intensive care units and emergency rooms around the country to scan adults. Unlike traditional CT scan machines, which are extremely large and must be kept in temperature-controlled settings, this device can easily be brought to any area of the hospital. This is especially meaningful in critical care and trauma cases where it is dangerous for patients to be moved.
Due to the machines small size, it has been used for mostly head scans on adults and has been particularly helpful to treat traumatic head injuries, where prompt detection of injury, swelling or bleeding is critical. But radiology technologists at Holtz Childrens Hospital are using the machine to scan children who are critically ill and require much monitoring and life support equipment and several caregivers to remain in stable condition.
“Transporting critical care patients out of the intensive care units, especially infants, can be extremely difficult,” said Barbara Ana Perez, R.T.(R.)(M.)(QM), R.D.M.S.FACHE, director of Imaging and Therapeutic Services. “Not only do we sometimes have to remove the patient from life support equipment but due to their acuity, moving the patient also requires numerous nurses, physicians, and specialists to follow them through the hospital to the radiology department for tests. With this new device, we can bring the machine and one or two radiology specialists to the patient.”
Radiologists at Jackson teamed up with NeuroLogica, the makers of CereTom, to design a curved platform that attaches to the machine specially made to hold infants and young children. The platform attaches to an infants crib or childs bed enabling physicians to easily move the patient only a short distance to the platform to be scanned. So far at Holtz, the machine has been used to scan premature infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit which is one of the largest in the nation and in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Many of these children, who are in critical condition and in need of constant care from a team of specialists, are scanned close to their beds with their team of caregivers nearby.
The machine is also unique in the way that it scans patients. Instead of the patient moving through the machine, which is how a traditional CT scan works, patients remain still while the scanner moves over them. The machine also has a low radiation emission due to its small size.
“The technology has made it a lot easier and safer to get scans of critically ill children here at Holtz,” said Carlos Rivero, R.T., chief technologist for the Radiology Department at Jackson. “With our one-of-a-kind platform to hold young children, we are able to get the scans and give the doctors the time-sensitive results needed to provide the best medical care to our patients.”
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