Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Performing coronary CT angiography (CCTA) scans on patients who present to the emergency room with chest pain can not only determine who requires further workup, it also saves on costs.
That's according to a new article we're featuring this week in our CT Digital Community highlighting data from the Rule Out Myocardial Infarction/Ischemia Using Computer Assisted Tomography (ROMICAT) II study, which was presented at the just-concluded American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago.
Researchers compared a group of emergency room patients who were scanned with CCTA to a group that received the current standard of care for evaluation of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The CCTA scans enabled physicians to discharge patients earlier, with no missed cases of ACS.
What's more, while the costs to work up patients who had ACS were higher in the CCTA group due to more diagnostic testing, overall, the group of scanned patients had lower average hospital stays, thus saving the healthcare system money.
Read more by clicking here, or visit the CT Digital Community at ct.auntminnie.com.
Good outcomes with SAVI
In other news, a recent clinical study found good cosmetic results with a new form of accelerated partial-breast brachytherapy called a strut-adjusted volume implant (SAVI).
Introduced a few years ago, the SAVI implant uses a multichannel, single-entry design in which the device is inserted via a single incision in the patient's breast and then can be expanded to conform to the site of a tumor cavity and a patient's specific anatomy. At the recent National Consortium of Breast Centers meeting, clinicians from a multicenter research group reported on the use of the implant in more than 1,000 women.
The cosmetic appearance of women treated with the implants was favorable, which is an important issue that affects quality of life following treatment. For more information click here, or visit our Radiation Oncology Digital Community at radiation.auntminnie.com.
