Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

New CT scan machine to become functional this week

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The new CT scan machine at the Medical College Hospital (MCH) here is expected to be functional by the end of the week, with the completion of the civil works and trial runs.

Civil works, including electrical work, air-conditioning, laminar flow system and insulation work has been completed. The MCH authorities have already started a trial run of the machine so that it can soon be made available for the benefit of patients.

The MCH authorities hope that a formal inauguration ceremony can be held at the beginning of next week. They are also hoping that along with the unveiling of the new machine, the inauguration of the new nephrology block, which has been constructed above the casualty can also be done. The nephrology department, which had been severely constrained for space and which has a perpetual waiting list for dialysis, now has an entire floor housing a mini theatre as well as three dialysis units.

The availability of the CT scan machine once again, after a gap of four months, has come as a big relief for the poor patients coming to the MCH who can ill-afford the scan fee charged in private scan centres.

The old CT scan machine at MCH, which ran for a record 12 years, had finally grounded to a halt in the first week of December last, leaving patients here in the lurch.

The machine had run almost non-stop, enabling at least six lakh images over the years. Normally, a picture tube is expected to churn out only about 40,000 images before it has to be replaced. But due to the heavy patient demand, the radiotherapy department is often forced to extend this to about 1.5 lakh images. Despite the overloading, the MCH had managed on a single CT scan machine all these years, with just one tube replacement.

Though the government had cleared a proposal to buy a new machine some time ago itself, this had not been possible due to paucity of funds. It was considering the urgency of the situation at MCH that the government gave permission to go ahead with the purchase of the new machine using HDS funds.

The new CT scan machine, being imported at Rs.1.25 crore, is a high-end machine with a four-slice scan facility, while the old machine had been a single slice one. The advantage of the new machine is its speed as well as high-resolution pictures. The MCH charges for CT scans are in the range of Rs.600 to Rs.3,000, depending on the nature of the scan.

The new location for the machine will be the old casualty block, which has been modified sufficiently. The location was chosen as the old casualty and the adjoining areas will be renovated in the coming months to a modern trauma care facility, under the Rs.120 crore Prime Minister’s Swasthya Suraksha Yojana.

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