A hospital in East Lancashire is now providing a more comfortable experience to patients undergoing SPECT•CT imaging as a result of the installation of a Symbia T Series SPECT•CT system from Siemens Healthcare.
Royal Blackburn Hospital, part of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, recently introduced the new system, which will be responsible for a wide range of nuclear medicine procedures.
“Siemens’ Symbia T was the solution of choice for Royal Blackburn Hospital and we anticipate that the benefits to our patients will include improved image quality and a higher specificity of results,” said Catherine Osborne, nuclear medicine lead radiographer at Royal Blackburn Hospital.
“The technology is providing improved characterisation of indeterminate lesions and differentiation between benign and malignant lesions. This ensures the service we provide to each and every patient is constantly being improved.”
Osborne added: “The Symbia T system is being utilised by the hospital for all routine nuclear medicine procedures as well as myocardial perfusion imaging using SPECT•CT for attenuation correction and parathyroid imaging using SPECT•CT for localisation. Its intended use for the future will include oncology scans such as bone scan imaging, lung scans, MIBG and Octreoscans.”
Recently installed, the Symbia T has replaced a single-headed system in the hospital’s nuclear medicine department and its affordability was a key factor in the rigorous selection process conducted by the trust. It is being used by the team at Royal Blackburn Hospital that includes radiographers, a medical technical officer and an assistant practitioner.
David O’Brien, directorate manager for radiology at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “This state-of-the-art system has replaced a conventional single-head gamma camera which served the department well for many years. It is important that as a service we move with technology and this SPECT•CT system is a major development for the directorate and another positive achievement for the trust. We are very pleased to be able to offer a more advanced service to our patients and complete examinations more rapidly.”
Philip Tesh, regional sales manager at Siemens Healthcare, added: “As an advanced and highly-integrated diagnostic SPECT•CT solution, it is designed with the primary aim of expanding the role of nuclear medicine. The system’s automation enables imaging speeds to be achieved that would have previously been unattainable, leading to faster patient diagnosis and treatment plus the ability to support increased patient volumes.”
