Thursday, July 5, 2007
By Jeffery Kurz

WALLINGFORD - A few days ago a patient weighing about 475 pounds was in the emergency room at MidState Medical Center in Meri­den with a suspected blood clot in his calf. Magnetic resonance imaging was needed to be sure.

Had the patient shown up a week earlier, he would have been out of luck.

That’s because the MRI machine at the hospital can accommodate a maximum of 450 pounds. But Mid­State has a new machine, called a high-field open MRI, that not only works for larger patients but for those with claustrophobia or other anxieties.

It turned out that the patient had a ruptured Achilles tendon.

“We would not have been able to make his diagnosis without this ma­chine,” said Dr. James Carroll, direc­tor of MRI at MidState Radiology As­sociates.
MidState’s new machine - there is only one other like it in the state, in Stamford - tackles one of the more pressing challenges of MRI. Open de­sign typically means less precise scans, but with the new technology there’s no sacrifice.

“It’s a natural evolution,” said Dr. Gary Dee, a MidState radiologist.

“You can do high level of work and the patient can tolerate it,” Dee said. “You get the best images you can get and have the patient feel comfort­able.”
A comfortable patient is far from an insignificant factor when it comes to MRI scanning. About 20 percent of MidState MRI patients express ap­prehension about the procedure, said Nathan Cumberlidge, MRI manager.

About 10 percent “are too uncom­fortable to go in there,” he said.

MRI works in a manner similar to computed tomography scans. It’s a non-invasive way of taking multiple images of the inside of the body. MRI works better for soft tissue areas.

For MRI, a patient has to slide into a tubed area and stay there, usually for at least 15 minutes. There are comforts; patients can listen to mu­sic, for example. But enduring the closed-in space can be uncomfort­able. And there are those who can’t fit into the space.
With the new technology “the sim­ple answer is that if you can have a CT scan you can have an MRI,” Car­roll said.
“This is, right now, state of the art,” Dee said.

With MidState’s new machine, made by Siemens, the tube diameter is significantly larger, and at 1.5 tesla, which is a measurement of magnetic flux density, helps shorten the time the patient needs to spend inside the tube. Many scans can be performed with the patient’s head outside the magnet bore area. The machine can accommodate patients weighing up to 550 pounds.

“In terms of trade-offs that you used to have to make, you don’t have to make them any more,” Car­roll said.
The machine, which Mid­State started using last Thurs­day, will complement the MRI used at the hospital since Mid­State opened on Lewis Avenue a decade ago. It’s in a trans­portable trailer and will be available at the hospital one day a week and three days a week at the Diagnostic Imaging Center in Wallingford. Dee said it can accommodate 30 patients a day.

“There’s no down side,” Dee said.