Patients at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust are benefitting from a new state-of-the-art CT scanner and upgraded X-Ray facilities.
The new machine and renovated department facilities provide enhanced diagnostics and improved patient and staff experience including:
- Larger size ‘doughnut’ for a more comfortable experience
- Improved communication between clinicians and the patient while using the machine, with a camera for patient-monitoring
- Colour-coded countdown for breath hold, helping patients know when to hold their breath during the scan
- Atmospheric lighting to help patients feel relaxed
The new CT helps simplify complex image-guided needle procedures with targeted needle path planning and guidance, image fusion, and laser-guided needle insertion for biopsies.
This major project marks an important investment in healthcare for the hospital and will bring about a substantial improvement in technology, patient experience, colleague experience and long‑term service resilience.
Staff will also benefit from a comprehensive training programme following installation, ensuring everyone is fully confident in using the new system. The upgraded environment and modern equipment will support a more efficient and positive workplace for colleagues.
The installation took 12 weeks and saw the Trust introduce a modular scanner on site to continue service. “As a specialist Orthopaedic hospital with a large number of oncology patients, CT-guided biopsies are an integral part of our care service but they require patients to undergo anaesthesia, explains Kirsty Walker, Deputy Head of Imaging at ROH.
Kirsty added: “Through careful planning and collaboration across teams, we were able to continue to provide these critical interventional treatments while we replaced our CT scanner. The temporary solution involved a second portable cabin to act as an anaesthesia and recovery suite for patients to receive treatment, comfortably and safely. Not only could we provide urgent CT-guided biopsies for our oncology patients, we were also able to continue providing CT-guided injections for our spinal patients without needing to refer them to other hospitals in the region while these works were underway.”