by
Diana Bradley, Staff Writer | April 19, 2012
From the April 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Philips’ Veradius neo mobile
C-arm with flat detector.
“Philips has given us a compliment by adding an expensive ceiling structure option that will move their ceiling-mounted C-arm laterally,” says Werner. “They see the benefit in the feature that we introduced with this generation of C-arm back in 2001.”
But ceiling-mounted and floor-mounted C-arms come with disadvantages too.
“When you hang a C-arm from the ceiling in the OR space, the carriage the C-arm rides on can become an impediment to the laminar airflow necessary for an open surgical procedure,” Werner says. “On the counter side, the floor-mounted C-arm becomes an obstacle when the room is not being used for imaging, but rather for a conventional procedure.”
Challenges: Radiation dose
“When we ask customers what their biggest issues or worries are about C-arms, dose rarely comes up,” says Shrawder. “But when we specifically ask about dose, they say, ‘Oh yes, of course we are concerned.’ It seldom comes from them spontaneously.”
Regardless, Shrawder notes that dose is definitely on customers’ radars, more so than in previous years. He attributes this to a higher level of awareness and ongoing press coverage. Accordingly, most manufacturers are making incremental modifications to existing technology, with a focus on reducing radiation dose.
In November, GE announced an additional $300 million investment in low-dose technologies and unveiled an array of radiation-dose management offerings. Representing more than $800 million of investment over 15 years, GE’s technologies include dose-reporting solutions, unique image reconstruction techniques, far-reaching Dose Check upgrades, free iPad apps and online courses promoting dose-conscious care.
Siemens also has an approach to lowering dose, called CARE (Combined Applications to Reduce Exposure),which has been going for over 10 years.
“Besides building our systems to minimize dose, we focus on training our users to help ensure that they are using the least amount of dose possible while obtaining the highest quality images,” says Siemens’ Westin.
One way of reducing dose levels is to provide images via pulsed wave, using a system like Philips’ Veradius mobile C-arm with flat panel detector technology.
