Dr. Greek’s Letter
YOUR NEW MRI
Imagine this – an MRI scanner with twice the imaging power of its predecessors and a host of new abilities to diagnose disease, but still quieter and more comfortable for patients. The new 3 Tesla (3T) MRI at Royal Jubilee Hospital brings all of this and more. As head of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in Medical Imaging for Island Health, I am thrilled that the Victoria Hospitals Foundation, the CRHD, and Island Health have enabled our new MRI facility which will tangibly improve healthcare quality and wait times for patients here on Vancouver Island.
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Picture a scanner so advanced that it can produce three-dimensional diagnostic movies of blood flow in the heart and evaluate the heart muscle itself without so much as a pinprick – these are the diagnostic capabilities that the new MRI brings and that will result in earlier, more accurate, and less invasive diagnosis of heart disease. That is what this powerful machine can do.
JOINING THE FIGHT AGAINST CANCER
The power of the new 3T MRI will find prostate cancer that previously could not be diagnosed at an early stage – like in Ralph’s story. It guides biopsies in some while at the same time eliminating the need for potentially dangerous invasive biopsies in others, by showing they are cancer-free. It more accurately guides therapy for cancers of the cervix, uterus, and rectum because of its higher resolution, and its new abilities permit more accurate detection of brain tumours. These are but a few of the ways it will join the fight against cancer.
FASTER AND MORE COMFORTABLE
The higher power of the new MRI allows some scans to be done faster, at the same or better quality – effectively reducing wait times, and time to treatment, for our Vancouver Island patients. It is quieter and more open, reducing anxiety from noise and claustrophobia and enabling scanning of anxious, claustrophobic, and larger patients. Many such patients simply could not get an MRI before.
THANK YOU!
The Big Picture is a true testament to the work done everyday in medical imaging. It honours the idea that more than half of all healthcare encounters require medical imaging, and the important notion that while imaging is equipment-intensive, it is patient-centred and ultimately impacts all of us. We in the Department of Medical Imaging are deeply grateful to you, the generous donors to the Victoria Hospitals Foundation, for supporting our local hospitals. Every day we use critical equipment funded by you to help save lives. It makes a tremendous difference to all of us. You make that difference!
Sincerely,
Dr. Shane Greek
Section Head, MRI
Island Health
Donate here to support the thousands of patients that need MRI scans annually in our hospitals. Thank you for contributing to The Big Picture campaign.
