Unusual Case

Today I saw an unusual case, or at least unusual to me. We scanned an abdomen pelvis on a twenty two year old female . Her diagnosis was frequent UTI's. She had no prior studies done. This was her first CT. When we saw the images come up, both of her kidneys looked awful! She had tons of cysts all over both of her kidneys. You could hardly see the kidneys themselves because of all of the cysts. Most of the cysts were substantial in size. I have heard of polycystic kidney disease and wondered if this was such a case. We also noticed her liver had numerous small dense areas as well. It almost looked like the cysts were spreading to the liver. Our radiologist looked at the images and suspected more than just kidney cysts. This was a good case for me to see, although I was sad for the patient. This semester has been a great learning experience for me. I look forward to next semester, but I am ready for Christmas Break!!

Scanner Down!!

This past week was interesting. Less than half way through Wednesday, our CT scanner just quit working! Everything just froze!! What a helpless feeling when you have a whole day ahead of you with patients every fifteen to twenty minutes!
As it turned out, we had to call Keith , our CT repair man. He showed up quickly, but had to order and replace a part in the scanner. So, we had to cancel the rest of the days schedule, and add all of those patients on for the next day. Sounds pretty simple, but our next day was already booked! Boy, was Thursday a busy day! We knew Wednesday night that we had better get a good nights sleep because Thursday would be non stop! To my surprise, it went remarkably well considering the circumstances. We had no biopsies scheduled , so that helped reduce the stress some. We worked efficiently and our teamwork payed off, and I got to scan quite a bit as well.

Bone Work

I have been enjoying bone work in CT lately. I think the detail in the bone work is awesome. We have had a few challenges recently with elbows! For some reason, patients that need elbows scanned lately have been rather large patients. This can pose a challege in the CT scanner, especially if they have limited range of movement with the elbow. I am learning how important improvising is in these cases. Can the patient keep the elbow straight down by their side in the AP position? If not, can they go head first in the scanner in the "superman" pose with affected elbow stretched out above their head? Can you get the elbow in the SFOV? ( Especially without them falling off the couch!) That is the ultimate challenge with certain patients. It is great to learn little tricks and tid bits of knowledge from seasoned techs! I still have so much to learn! I can't believe we only have a few weeks left in this semester.