Additional CT scanner at The Royal Oldham to reduce diagnosis time and length of stay for patients

CT scanner at The Royal Oldham Hospital

The Royal Oldham Hospital is to install a new additional CT scanner which will bring a wide range of benefits to patients and clinicians.

Over £1.2 million is being spent at the hospital which will see the provision of an additional CT scanner and building works within the radiology department to provide extra radiologist offices and improved facilities in the interventional day-case unit.

New facilities will include a new CT scan room and control room which will have direct access to the Emergency Department for the urgent imaging of their patients, meaning that there will be a 30 minute maximum wait from referral within the emergency department to the patients undergoing their scan.

Building works to house the new equipment are due to start at the beginning of April.

The additional scanner will help The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs The Royal Oldham Hospital, to meet the increasing demand being placed upon the radiology service, whilst meeting national and internal turnaround standards to ensure that patients get the fastest diagnosis they can, which has the potential to reduce patient length of stay in hospital.

Paul Barker, senior directorate manager radiology and neurophysiology, said: “This new addition CT scanner to our expanding imaging service will greatly improve access to patients, ensuring a 30 minute referral to scan time which in turn improves clinical prognosis. The high specification scanner will also meet the demands of current growth in CT imaging of 9%, and importantly for patients, mean they would not have to be transferred to another hospital site should the existing scanner break down or be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance.”

The scanner is a Toshiba Aquilion Prime 160 which complements the other five Toshiba scanners in the Pennine Acute Trust at North Manchester General Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary and Fairfield General Hospital in Bury.

Tasmin Hamilton, radiology cross sectional imaging manager, added: “The new scanner will provide excellent quality images at the lowest possible radiation dose to the patient using the latest scanning technology.”

A computerised tomography (CT) scan uses x-rays and a computer to create detailed images of the inside of the body. They are sometimes referred to as CAT scans or computed tomography scans and produce detailed images of many structures inside the body, including the internal organs, blood vessels and bones.

CT scanner can be used to:

• Diagnose conditions – including damage to bones, injuries to internal organs, problems with blood flow, strokes and cancer. 
• Guide further tests or treatments – they can help to determine the location, size and shape of a tumour before having radiotherapy, or allow a doctor to take a needle biopsy (where a small tissue sample is removed using a needle) or drain an abscess. 
• Monitor conditions – including checking the size of tumours during and after cancer treatment.