300 children have undergone helical CT scan

By Ramya Kannan

CHENNAI, NOV. 22. More than 300 children have undergone the new sub-second helical CT scan in just over a month, since the installation of the machine in the Kanchi Kamakoti CHILDS Trust Hospital here.

With the chest, brain and abdominal scans topping the requests, both diagnosticians and paediatricians feel that the new scanner is a blessing in disguise, as its speed (0.7 seconds) is the most convenient for testing children. ``It is difficult when children start struggling when they are in the scanning room. Sometime, the images do not come clear if they are constantly moving their head. With this state-of-the-art scanner, costing nearly Rs. 1.5 crores, testing children has become easier'', according to Dr. Sandeep D. Jaipurkar, diagnostician.

The helical scan also makes it easy to shoot images of the specified parts, even if children do move around, the diagnosticians say. But according to paediatricians, the primary advantage is that the risk arising out of shifting children who come in with head injury and trauma is eliminated.

``Earlier, we had to shift the children to a nearby diagnostics centre when they came in the trauma stage. Besides the delay, there was the inherent risk of causing further damage to a child who came in with head injury, by moving him/her'', Mr. Natarajan, financial director, CHILDS Trust Hospital, says.

A team of doctors would have to accompany the child and the availability of an ambulance and the extra cost it entailed hung heavily on the parents.

As a 200-bedded hospital, the scanning centre became a `medical necessity', Mr. Natarajan adds. Hence, the hospital decided to go ahead with the project, commissioning Millennium Imaging, a private team of diagnosticians, to instal the scanning facility on the hospital premises.

In-patients are charged less, while out-patients pay the regular amount. However, the hospital, which is being run as a Trust, has entered into an agreement with the diagnosticians to conduct free tests for deserving and poor patients, according to Dr. Cherian Thomas, diagnostician, Millennium Imaging.

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