Mercy Health doctors using new state-of-the-art body radiology equipment
At the beginning of August, healthcare providers and doctors started utilizing a state-of-the-art interventional radiology suite featuring advanced imaging technology for stroke patients at Mercy Health in Youngstown.
Deb Andrzejczyk is the radiology manager for St. Elizabeth Hospital in Youngstown.
According to Andrzejczyk, there are two parts to the machine that can take front and side views at the same time, a $5.5 million investment.
“Our old unit basically would take 20 seconds to do a CT image, and this one takes four seconds,” she said. “Even just the least bit of movement for the patient causes the images to be blurry, and that 16 second difference makes a huge difference. The quality of the images are second to none, and they see a lot more detail than they ever could.”
There are about 50 to 60 patient procedures that utilize the new interventional radiology suite, including strokes and traumatic injuries.
“For lacerated livers or spleens, we can go in and close off the blood vessels to stop the bleeding on an emergent basis,” Andrzejczyk said. “There’s a lot of cancer treatments we do in the IR suite, as well as easier things inserting hemodialysis catheters. There’s a lot of procedures we do in there.”
President of St. Elizabeth’s Youngstown Kathy Harley said adding this technology sets doctors up for success and brings patients critical, life-saving care they need close to home.
“We’re the only level one trauma center or the only regional referral center, if you look at the trajectory between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, so we have to provide this care for the community,” Harley said. “Time is the brain. If we didn’t provide it here, and we had to ship them, their outcomes wouldn’t be as good. You only have so many minutes to do what you need to do to save the brain. Every minute longer is more of a hardship on the brain and the recovery process. You’re going to waste a lot of precious minutes if you don’t have a location real close that can do these kind of procedures.”
By the end of November, an identical imaging suite will replace the existing interventional suite and they’ll have two state-of-the-art IR units, increasing the hospital’s capabilities to treat and care for patients quicker.
“We expanded our pre-op and post-op area so that we could get patients ready quicker, recover more,” Harley said. “If we’d only stayed with our three beds, we really wouldn’t have made a lot of headway. We went from three beds to seven.”
Jennifer Lohry is the imaging director for Mercy Health in Youngstown and Lorraine.
“When we do anything in our emergency facilities, we try to make sure we have the community in mind,” she said. “This is an area where we really have to pay attention because people can’t go elsewhere for care. We’re doing a lot of these improvements and this new equipment to keep patients here, with their family and in their community, because it’s a hardship. Some people don’t have transportation to Cleveland, so we want to keep them here. So all of these advancements we’re doing for the community.”
