A new heart scan in seconds
A new scanner is giving Australian doctors unprecedented heart information without patients having to undergo an invasive procedure such as an angiogram.
“This machine is the start of the non-invasive revolution of imaging the heart,” Dr Peter Illes, cardiologist at the Sydney Adventist Hospital, said.
The approach is so revolutionary some doctors say they have changed the way they do heart bypass operations.
The CT scans revealed that there was often a better artery for the doctor to operate on than the one they had commonly used. The latest CT scans allow doctors to diagnose whether patients have heart problems in less than 10 seconds which means life saving treatment can start immediately.
Patients received a much lower dose of radiation and they did not have to take medication to slow their heart rate to capture the images. The first machine has been installed at the Sydney Adventist Hospital in Wahroonga with two other machines to follow at Sydney’s Concord and Liverpool Hospitals.
