Sensible Solutions for Refurbished Radiology

As some people continue to gain weight, manufacturers’ of MRI equipment have been producing scanners to accommodate larger sized patients. Also patients that are claustrophic or just uncomfortable find that the Open MRI is a better option.  Hence the need for more facilities to have the Open MRI Scanner.

In the constantly evolving world of healthcare and medical imaging, what’s new today could be in need of an upgrade tomorrow. It’s a challenge many hospitals and radiology offices face as they attempt to keep up with advancing technology. It’s also a primary consideration when hospitals and clinics decide to replace or update their existing equipment. When budgets are tight, many administrators must carefully decide whether the current equipment is negatively affecting patient outcomes or preventing the staff from making accurate diagnoses. It is a far too common assessment that can lead to older pieces of equipment remaining in use because they meet the minimum requirements.

If you’ve ever had an MRI Coil failure, you know it’s your basic nightmare. After all, unless you’ve got a spare around, it usually results in canceled procedures, patient rescheduling, potentially delayed diagnosis, increased work for your staff and a lot of grumbling! And the revenues lost? When you factor in lost revenues and the cost of replacing and repairing a failed MRI coil, it can add up to $3,200+ every day it’s out of commission!

It seems like every time we turn on the news, we hear about another company that’s had its information hacked. So just how secure is the information about your patients? And how easy is it to hack into a medical system like an MRI?

Over the last 50 years medical imaging has repeatedly transformed medicine. X-Ray, MRI, DXA and CT Scans have changed how physicians measure, manage, diagnose, treat, and even think about medical illnesses and conditions. Technological innovations have also made imaging faster, more precise and less invasive to use. In fact, medical imaging is such an essential part of health care practice today that it often becomes the standard preliminary step for diagnosing virtually all major medical conditions and diseases. In some cases medical imaging itself is even being used to treat, manage and predict disease.

It’s never been easier to share information, thanks to tweets, text messages, blogs, social media and email, to name a few. Thankfully, that ease of connectivity is finally available in the healthcare community, between physicians, hospitals, clinics and other healthcare systems. 

For many people who are concerned with developing a better physique, recognizing the difference between weight loss and muscle loss, or weight gain and muscle gain can be a complete guessing game. Even when you start seeing the results in the mirror, watching the numbers on the scale fluctuate from day-to-day or week-to-week can be maddening. Even calculating Body-mass index (BMI) doesn’t seem to give most people any real insight into the true composition of their body. Sometimes it feels like discovering what’s actually going on is near impossible.

For as long as human’s have practiced medicine, surgical procedures have almost always required the cutting, moving or removing of a patient’s tissue. At it’s core surgery will always be an invasive procedure, but as technology and surgical techniques improve, invasiveness has been minimalized and healing times have decreased. The problem is that the need to physically open the human body in some way has mostly remained.

When most people hear the word “nuclear,” the first thing that comes to mind is not so positive. Think Chernobyl. Think Fukushima Daiichi. But in the medical world, “nuclear” is a great thing. Nuclear medicine is a branch of medical imaging that uses small amounts of radioactive materials to diagnose and determine the severity a variety of diseases, including many cancers, heart disease, gastrointestinal, endocrine, neurological disorders and other abnormalities within the body. These procedures provide a wealth of valuable information that is not available through x-rays.

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.