Dear AuntMinnie Member,
The resurgence of COVID-19 in the U.S. is dominating the headlines as infections spread in response to a reopening economy. Signs are that we could be back to square one when it comes to dealing with the pandemic.
That's why recent news out of Singapore is even more chilling. The country had an effective response to the first wave of COVID-19 cases, but it is currently experiencing a second wave of infections described as a "slow tsunami" in an article that was our top story for the past week.
In another frightening study related to COVID-19, researchers from the U.K. are reporting their discovery of a set of inflammatory symptoms in children, a condition that they are calling multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).
Coronavirus and service
Meanwhile, you can count major shifts in equipment service requirements as among the many changes wrought by the novel coronavirus pandemic. A new report from IMV Medical Information Division forecasts that service needs for mobile x-ray systems will skyrocket due to heavy use of these systems during the pandemic.
IMV queried U.S. hospitals on their changes in service needs from March to May, during the height of the pandemic. While needs for mobile x-ray service have grown, demand for maintenance of advanced modalities like CT, MRI, and nuclear medicine have fallen with the decline in procedure volume for these systems.
How safe are new GBCAs?
How safe is the new generation of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs)? New agents are thought to have stronger links between gadolinium and chelate ligands, and thus they ought to be less risky for patients with impaired kidney function who might be at risk of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF).
But is that really the case? Researchers from Duke University performed a literature review of studies that covered the use of newer and older GBCAs. The conclusion? While the risk of NSF is very low with the new agents, caution is still warranted.
In other MRI news, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital found that performing an MRI scan before breast cancer surgery finds more cases of ductal carcinoma in situ. And MRI was one of the modalities used in South Carolina to discover that a mass in the mouth of a young girl was actually a second oral cavity.
Get these stories and more in our MRI Community.
Disclosure: IMV Medical Information Division is a sister company of AuntMinnie.com.
