It's painless and it's quick - a new scanner lets doctors tell you about your ticker in a much shorter time
Three weeks ago, heart patient Chew Wee Chieh had an angiogram which involved injecting a liquid via a tube called a catheter into an artery or vein in his groin area. Not only did it involve some surgery, it also took him three days to recover in hospital as there was heavy pressure around the spot where the tube was inserted and he could not move his legs.
On the same day, he also underwent a Computer Tomography scan, where his heart was scanned - in just a second.
The procedure was totally non-invasive and painless. That's thanks to the Toshiba Aquilion One, the latest Computed Tomography (CT) scanner with 320 simultaneous slices which allows doctors to view the entire heart in one single shot.
The 320 slices, each about 0.5mm wide (which is about the thickness of the skin on the eyelids), covers a total of 16cm of image area.
CT scanners are not new. The 64-slice version has been around for five years. However, it requires several shots that have to be pieced together with image overlaps before the whole organ is pictured. The procedure takes six to 10 seconds.
The new scanner - the first in Singapore and third in the world after the United States and Japan - costs about $4 million and is now stationed at Mount Elizabeth Hospital. Each session costs about $1,150 before GST.
"For this new CT scanner, the process is over before you know it," said Mr Chew, 35, who was diagnosed with heart problems this year and says invasive tests such as the angioplasty are "not pleasant".
The highly invasive angiogram uses X-rays to capture an image of the blood vessels and organs in the body. But a liquid called contrast, which makes blood visible on X-rays, has to be injected into an artery or vein first.
According to Dr Michael Lim from the Singapore Heart, Stroke and Cancer Centre, the angiogram carries "a real risk of stroke, tear of vessels, bleeding and, even death".
On the other hand, the new 320-slice scanner allows doctors to make a quick diagnosis during the initial hours of a stroke, which is crucial for a patient's survival.
It also exposes patients to less radiation than the 64-slice scanner because the machine takes a full image of the heart in one shot. Multiple shots mean a higher radiation dose. But doctors said the 64-slice version will still be good enough for most people.
Dr Philip Koh, from The Heart Clinic at Mount Elizabeth Hospital, said the new scanner, like any other machine, works best when it is prescribed by the doctor as part of a patient's treatment. Dr Lim is more concerned about the human element in diagnosis.
"The key limitation with the use of the CT scanner to assess the heart is not in the number of slices but the experience and the ability of the operator to process and interpret the images to give an accurate assessment of the coronary artery disease," he said.
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