Sensible Solutions for Refurbished Radiology

It’s October, which means it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month—and there’s no better time for a discussion about how to choose your next digital mammography system.  The good news is, you don’t have to buy a new one—there is a wide range of pre-owned and refurbished digital mammography equipment on the market that can serve your clinic, hospital or practice.

As healthcare and diagnostics improve for human patients, so it does for members of the animal kingdom.  And perhaps one of the most important tools to improve treatment for dogs, cats, horses and other mammals are C-Arms. Before you think your practice can’t afford one, think again.  There are plenty of used and refurbished C-Arms on the market that can make a Mobile C-Arm a reality for your practice. Even if you have limited space, in all likelihood there’s a C-Arm that will work for you.

So you’re in the market for a refurbished or used CT Scanner, and you’re partial to Siemens. But you don’t know which one is exactly right for your practice, clinic or healthcare facility. 

There are so many options in the world today. Should you get Verizon, AT&T or Sprint cell phone service? Should you buy an iPhone or a Samsung cell phone? PC or Mac computer? You can spend hours reading up on all your options in life but when 
push comes to shove, any of these options will fulfill your needs. The same is the case for C-Arms. Is an OEC any better than a Philips or Siemens C-Arm? Or Ziehm for that matter? I'm sure there are people on both sides of the argument. So let’s look at the question 'what C-Arm should I buy?' from a different perspective...

It's the 21st Century. I've said it once and I'll say it again. Technology is constantly improving. Gone are the days of Eight Tracks and Video Tapes. We live in a digital world. A great example of this is our computer monitors. Computer Monitors used to be a big box CRT that would sit on top of the desk and take up a lot of space. Fast-forward to present day where the monitor is digital and so small that it has become handheld. 

Have you ever gone to McDonald's? Of course, that’s a silly question, since 68 million people go to a McDonald’s every day. I’m sure you have been one of those 68 million people at one point in your life. So, when you walk up to the counter, what do you ask for? Small, medium, large or super-sized fries? That usually depends on how hungry you are. And just because the fries are super-sized doesn't make them better fries, right? It just means that you get more of them. 

An MRI consists of multiple coils of conductive wire. They are stacked or nested, and loop around the core of the coil.  Each wire serves a different purpose, but are usually a physically small antennae of sorts. They produce a uniform magnetic field without producing significant amounts of radiation.

There’s nothing more effective in treating breast cancer than early detection. So once you get a patient in for an annual exam, which is the best technology to use? Let’s take a look at the three ways to image a patient’s breasts:MRI, tomosynthesis, or digital mammography.

As a health care professional or administrator it’s important to know the difference between the various types of MRI equipment. However, before we jump into the differences, let’s examine the basics. MRI is an acronym that stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Most of these complex machines are commonly referred to as “MRI” or “MRI scanners,” regardless of the type of specific MRI equipment being referred to.  Please check out our INFOGRAPHIC HERE on MRI Differences too!

C-Arms have been around for more than 30 years, and people often view it as a “Coke and Pepsi” market: dominated by OEC C-Arms and Philips C-Arms.  Okay, and maybe Siemens C-Arms, too. But there is another fairly big player that’s often overlooked: Ziehm C-Arms. I like to think of them as the RC Cola of the C-Arm market. They've been around just as long as the big guys (1983) and the quality of their C-Arms is actually on par, as well.  (We all know RC Cola is just as good as Coke and Pepsi!) However, for some reason the Ziehm name does not carry the same appeal or recognition as OEC, Philips or Siemens.