Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Our January 22 article on the work that University of Virginia radiologist Dr. Gia Deangelis is doing in Haiti was the top story on AuntMinnie.com this week. As a follow-up, we're bringing you another report from that quake-devastated country, this time by a radiologic technologist from Idaho.
Barb Gearhard of Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise travels to Haiti two or three times a year to help deliver radiology services to a pediatric hospital in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétionville. This year, her trip has added importance as the demand for radiography has surged in the wake of the disaster, according to an article by contributing writer Donna Domino.
Ms. Gearhard helped lead the installation of a new digital radiography system at the hospital in October and, fortunately, the system survived the earthquake and is acquiring hundreds of images daily. Read about the challenges Ms. Gearhard faces in Haiti by clicking here.
Software tracks patient CT exams
In other news, we're featuring several stories in our CT Digital Community on the challenges and benefits of CT imaging.
In the first story, senior editor Erik L. Ridley reports on a Rhode Island healthcare system that developed a data-mining application to alert physicians when a patient might be at risk of receiving too much radiation based on previous scans. The software tracks a patient's imaging history within the system and issues an alert when certain criteria are met, such as multiple past studies.
Many radiation dose experts believe that patient-tracking mechanisms like this could be a good way to prevent the cumulative effects of radiation in patients who get multiple scans. Learn how the Rhode Island group did it by clicking here.
For a story on the benefits of CT, read international editor Eric Barnes' story on how Duke University researchers found a correlation between increased use of preoperative CT and a drop in negative appendectomies over 10 years at their facility.
The drop wasn't uniform across all patient populations, however -- find out who seemed to benefit most from CT by clicking here, or visit the CT Digital Community at ct.auntminnie.com.
