Improved efficiency and patient experience at first-in-Wales Glan Clwyd CT suite

Refurbishment work on the CT scanning suite at Glan Clwyd Hospital has brought improved facilities and first-of-its-kind in Wales technology.

The hospital’s Radiology department is the first in the country to have a Dual Source CT system, which delivers a lower dose of radiation to patients, providing increased safety for people undergoing regular scans.

The new scanner also features an image-quality improving infrared camera, and remote-access training software.

The work included renovation of the facilities linked to the scanner, with a new changing room and en-suite providing greater comfort and dignity to patients undergoing scans.

Nicola Dobson, Principal Radiographer for CT, said: “Our work in radiology focusses on risk versus benefit. Radiation is obviously harmful, so being able to work with lower doses is really important. The lower the dose, the less risk there is.

“We see a lot of cancer patients here who have regular scans, so being able to offer their routine scans at a lower dose is an obvious benefit.

“It also has an infrared camera built in, which again improves the quality of what we’re doing.

“We have to position patients to get the best quality image for the least radiation, but with multiple people carrying out scans, there’s always variation .

“This has an automated camera which allows us to position people in the same way over multiple scans on different dates, which improves the quality of comparing scans over a period of time.”

“It’s tailored to each patient, so they’re always aligned in the same way.”

“Aligning in the same way helps also helps to further reduce the radiation dose to our patient each time they came”

“Patient dignity and privacy were at the centre of this whole project, so having a private recovery area, changing facility and en-suite toilet will make coming in for a scan a much more pleasant experience for our patients too.”

The new CT scanner also allows the department to provide increased support to colleagues in Cardiology. The new equipment provides high temporal resolution images, improving the quality of monitoring patients with high or unstable heart rates.

Nicola said: “A really important innovation is the quality of the imaging we get back on heart scans.

“Trying to capture images of a beating heart which is always moving is really difficult.

“This scanner can capture the heart and the arteries in one heart beat, which we weren’t able to do before. Previously you would have to use beta-blockers to lower a patients’ heart rate to get a good enough image, but that’s not needed now.

“So we’re getting a better image and achiving images on patients we could not scan before with less need to give drugs to achieve it.”

Training on the scanner was provided remotely using remote training and software built into the scanner.

As the most advanced and newest scanner in the hospital, it will predominantly be used for outpatient appointments to help improve the department’s efficiency.