Expert Medical Staff — from skilled surgeons to minimally invasive procedures, Backus Hospital supports exceptional medical talent with state-of-the-art technology.
Caregiver's View
Herb Lustberg, MD, Section Chief, Interventional Radiology |
Departmental growth and continuous advances in minimally invasive procedures highlighted a historic year for Interventional Radiology at Backus Hospital.
Our most significant accomplishment was the designing and building of a new Interventional Radiology Suite in the Diagnostic Imaging Department. The importance of this cannot be overestimated — it will allow our board-certified interventional radiologists to continue to expand the array of less invasive, image-guided procedures that we offer. For many patients, these procedures mean decreased risk, less pain and shorter recovery times.
An expert team of radiology, architecture and engineering personnel participated in the design of the suite, which will house a cutting-edge Siemens Axiom Artis dTA. The Axiom Artis is a digital detector angiography room with the most up-to-date features, including:
- Three-dimensional angiography
- Reduced radiation for patients and staff
- Full integration with the hospital's Picture Archiving Communications System (PACS)
- A state-of-the-art "Leonardo" workstation, which allows us to harness our 3-D technology and efficiently read complex studies from various modalities.
- Increased space, a substerile room and an operating roomlike environment, allowing us to combine some of our procedures with surgery. These multi-specialty efforts will certainly better serve patients throughout eastern Connecticut.
Also in 2006,we were fully accredited for carotid artery stenting. This is a procedure that, for some patients, is an alternative to carotid endarterectomy (CEA). Carotid artery stenting is typically performed on patients who have had carotid surgery and have residual or recurrent disease; have previously undergone radiation to the neck,making CEA technically difficult to perform; or who have significant health issues that can make traditional surgery too risky. Each patient is considered individually, and clinicians make collaborative decisions on what is right for the patient.
We continue our efforts to offer the latest treatment options to female patients. In addition to offering uterine fibroid embolization, which can be an alternative to a hysterectomy, we have started treating pelvic congestion syndrome with ovarian vein embolization. Candidates for this outpatient procedure are women who often have unexplained pelvic pain, sometimes for long periods of time,worsened by extended sitting or standing and improved by lying down.
Our commitment to cancer patients continues, with radiofrequency ablation of several lung and renal malignancies in which surgery was not a viable option. Transarterial chemoembolization, which involves administration of chemotherapeutic drugs mixed with an embolizing material, also has been utilized in some cases with encouraging results.
In a major collaborative effort, the Departments of Nephrology,Dialysis, Radiology and Surgery collaborated to better manage dialysis access. The result was a vascular management algorithm providing a simple pathway for diagnosis and treatment of poorly functioning dialysis accesses. Together,we are able to intervene at the first sign of difficulty, and save lives in the process.