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Show j Nuclear medicine finds use av county hospital - . u r i R r raN MOBILE NUCLEAR medicine equipment is being leased at the Uintah County Hospital to detect early signs of heart disease and evaluate functions of body organs. Keeping pace with medical technology, nuclear medicine is being used at the Uintah County Hospital on a lease-basis to allow totally safe monitoring of many body functions. Nuclear medicine requires that a chemical, which is attracted to a certain body organ, is laced with a very low radiation and then injected into the body intravenously. The flow of the radiation through the bloodstream is traced by a hair dryer-shaped instrument. in-strument. I According to Dr. Ted Wickstrom, part-time radiologist at the Uintah County Hospital, inside the detector are sodium iodine crystals which flash visible light when stimulated by (radiation, a process known as scintillation. scin-tillation. Over 38 tubes behind the sodium iodine crystal, in the detector, record the presence, position and intensification in-tensification of the flashes of light stimulated by the radiation and feed the information into a computer. The computer, which can analyze 75,000 bits of data forms a composite image on a TV screen, which looks similar to an x-ray. (Continued on Page 2) Medicine - - - (Continued from Page 1) The images from the computer are extremely useful in evaluating blood flow in the brain for stroke victims or measuring the effectiveness of the heart, Dr. Wickstrom said. By drawing a box with a curser on the computer screen around a chamber of the heart, the computer will determine the amoung of blood left in the inscribed in-scribed chamber after each beat. These figures can be narrowed down to specific areas of the chamber; the walls, floor, or tops, to determine the amount of blood left in the chamber or the effecttiveness of that area of the heart. Dr. Wickstrom stressed the fact the nuclear medication can be used to examine the kidneys, liver, gastrical system, as well as the heart or the brain. The computer also has the capacity to portray sequentially the functions of an organ which show the movement of the organ or blood through the organ much like a movie. Several of the advantages of nuclear medicine, according to Dr. Wickstrom, is its non-invasiveness and the fact that it uses less radiation than a regular x-ray. x-ray. "The earliest sign heart disease can be detected with nuclear medicine," Dr. Wickstrom said. Cost of the equipment including the computer is around $150,000 and is completely portable. Depending on the need, the equipment is transported and stationed at a hospital for several days. "The reason we brought the equipment equip-ment to the Uintah County Hospital is because the County Commissioners said it couldn't be afforded," Dr. Wickstrom said. "Although the sale of the hospital is a complex decision," Dr. Wickstrom said, "an advantage that clearly favors HCA is the ability to capitalize this type of equipment expenditure." "Of course, the equipment needs to pay its way no matter who owns it," Wickstrom added. Cost of nuclear medicine treatment varies depending on the chemicals used, said Gene Bolz, radiologist specialized in nuclear medicine. For example, thallium, which has a half-life of 20 minutes (when half of its radiation decays), costs $150 for the small amount needed for nuclear medicine. Other chemicals can only be formed in a cyclotron, which costs several million dollars, Bolz said. Most chemicals used are under $25. |
