At Longmont Clinic we strive to be a leader in medical advances and our Radiology Department is no exception. We are currently in the process of installing one of the newest and most advanced Computed Tomography units available today — the Siemens Somatom Sensation 64-slice CT Scanner. This scanner employs the latest and fastest technology to provide precise and clear images of the inside of the body, allowing your doctor to find the best and most appropriate treatment for you. This new technology offers great advancements in caring for patients with heart disease, cardiovascular conditions including stroke and blood clots, as well as other conditions that involve the brain, colon or lungs.

CT scans are an important diagnostic tool that physicians use to detect heart health, strokes, head injuries, herniated discs, fractures and soft tissue damage. A scan is made by the CT machine taking cross-sectional images of the body, and then a computer puts all the images together to make up one extremely detailed picture. Older CT scanning units provide pictures that look similar to a black and white x-ray. This new technology provides excellent detailed and color images, regardless of the patient’s size or weight. It can provide detailed, three-dimensional images of the heart along with many other organs and parts inside the body. Cardiologists will now be able to see images of the heart beating in real time and can evaluate the health of the heart much more accurately with this non-invasive test.

Patient Benefits
When having a scan, a patient is asked to lie on a comfortable table while it moves through the gantry (a circular opening) where an x-ray system rotates around the patient. Patients will not feel anything while it is taking the images, but instead will hear a "whirring" noise as the machine takes its pictures. New technology improves patient comfort and allows patients to hold their breath for shorter periods of time. On average, a scan will take a total of 10–15 minutes to complete. Because this CT unit is engineered for speed and accuracy, a patient can undergo a scan and get a diagnosis in as little as 10 minutes. Previously, if someone had a suspected heart problem, a variety of tests had to be performed. Now, that same information can be captured in one single scan. It will even allow some patients to avoid invasive procedures, such as cardiac catheterization.

One great feature of this new scanner is that it offers people the opportunity to really practice pro-active health care. It can perform several types of scans that can tell a lot about the body without any invasive or surgical procedures.

The new scanner can look for calcium build-up, which has proven to be a marker for heart disease and the most powerful predictor of heart attacks. The heart scan can visualize the arteries and detect blockages. It can identify plaque or calcium build-up years or even decades before stress testing or any other non-invasive procedure. Also, all heart scans will be reviewed and interpreted by board certified heart specialists.

Lung scans can give patients an early diagnosis for lung cancer, and the earlier that lung cancer is detected the better the chances for a cure. This scanner can identify lung cancer six times earlier than a conventional chest x-ray. Within a matter of minutes the scanner takes hundreds of images of the chest. The computer puts these images together and allows your doctor to get a clear look at the inside of your chest cavity and diagnose any problems or abnormalities within minutes.

Colon cancer is the second most common form of deadly cancer. The main area where the cancer develops is in the large intestine in the form of polyps — which can grow to become cancerous tumors. These polyps can be identified during an intestinal scan and then removed during a colonoscopy, therefore preventing cancer from developing in the intestine. Colonoscopy is still the gold standard to visualize polyps, but the intestinal scan certainly has a place for patients who would like to have a look inside in a less complicated and virtually painless procedure. If you think that you may benefit from any of these preventive medicine scans, ask your doctor about them today.