On the morning of March 13, 2019, a 32-year-old female with syncope was admitted to the Emergency Department of Hop Luc Hospital, the largest private hospital in Qinghua Province, Vietnam. After biochemical and electrocardiogram examination, she was initially suspected of endocarditis or myocardial infarction. After a successful resuscitation, the patient regained consciousness, but remained in serious condition. Her physicians decided that to confirm the diagnosis and guide further treatment, a coronary CTA scan was needed immediately.
Previously, the community has be served by a GE 16-slice CT and a 32-slice Hitachi CT, neither of which could complete coronary artery scan. Fortunately, the hospital’s newly installed NeuViz 128 from Neusoft Medical Systems could be used to perform coronary CTA for this patient. This was the first case of coronary CTA using the NeuViz 128 at Hop Luc Hospital. Yet it was not ordinary case. When the patient arrived at the CT suite, her heart rate was measured as high as 110, and she was in a semi-coma state.
For this reason, she couldn’t cooperate with the breath-hold procedure nor hold her arms above her head, two actions needed for coronary artery examination. Even more challenging, because of her serious condition, she could not be administered a Beta-blocker to lower her heart rate. These factors increased the clinical difficulty of the examination and the Imaging Director prepared the patient’s family that the potential for a successful examination would be low. But the family insisted and signed the informed consent.
After assessing the situation, the Neusoft training field specialist, onsite for clinical training, chose to use a relatively large pitch of 0.25 for scanning, to shorten the scanning time and improve the probability of successful study. After all the preparations were completed, the coronary CTA scan was performed with contrast medium. To the surprise of all, the scan results were fully sufficient to confirm the diagnosis, with only minor unavoidable respiratory artifacts and arms artifacts on both sides of the body.
Finally, Neusoft Medical Systems got an appreciate letter from Hop Luc
Hospital after providing a series of clinical training.
