SA: Mobile brain imaging machine to save lives surgeon

AAP General News (Australia)
08-12-1999
SA: Mobile brain imaging machine to save lives surgeon

By Sam Lienert

ADELAIDE, Aug 12 AAP - A mobile machine that produces cross-sectional images of patients'
brains and livers has been used in an operation for the first time in Australia.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital's (QEH) director of radiology Roger Davies said the mobile
x-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner had the potential to save the lives of patients with
brain tumours or liver cancer.

Dr Davies said the size of scanning equipment previously meant a patient had to be moved
into a a specialised room to produce an accurate image of their brain or liver.

He said this created difficulties for surgeons, who could have to cut a tumour out of a
patient's brain without being certain whether it had changed during the operation.

But he said the mobile machine - used at the QEH for the first time yesterday - could be
used in the operating theatre to give an accurate picture of the size and position of the
tumour during an operation.

"Inside the brain when the surgeon opens the skull to cut something out that doesn't belong
there all he can see is what's on the surface," Dr Davies told AAP.

"It's very difficult to appreciate the depth of what he's trying to cut out and what is in
other areas of the brain.

"It (the scanner) can be wheeled into the area of the operation itself and the surgeon can
take a scan of the brain so you can see all the deep areas of the brain.

"(Previously), you'd cut and cut and cut until you thought you were getting back into
normal brain. (The new machine) adds a new level of certainty to see what's going on inside
the brain."

Dr Davies said a key application the QEH had planned for the machine was to treat patients
with liver cancer.

"Some parts of the liver aren't accessible without taking the liver out, we will be able to
use the CT to guide a needle into that part of the liver," he said.

He said this would almost certainly save the lives of some patients.

"If the tumour can't be treated then the patient will die in a matter of weeks or months,
this technique will cure tumours that were previously untreatable," Dr Davies said.

He said it would also benefit patients who were unable to be moved from the intensive care
unit due to the instability of their injuries.

AAP scl/sn/it

KEYWORD: SCANNER

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