Related to radiology in general and Indian radiology in particular
The July issue of Clinical Radiology carries a review article on patello-femoral imaging by Elias DA and White LM.
The concepts of instability, subluxation and dislocation and the associated imaging, both with plain radiographs and dynamic studies (CT & MRI) are well-covered. A few variants (bipartite patella) and associated lesions are also covered. Though a bit long, it is a good review article for those interested in these issues.
Hologic has just announced FDA approval of a new digital mammogram workstation called SecureViewDx. Apparently this workstation can view digital mammograms from all vendors along with CT and MRI images and is ready for CAD use.
This is all very fine and we can see from their website and quarterly press releases that the company is doing some exciting things.
But it has to answer for what it has done to its customers in India. When Medical Equipment & Services headed by Mr. Selvakumar took a distributorship from Hologic for its range of DXAs sometime in 1996, it was with the understanding that Hologic was supporting MES and its services. After Lunar was acquired by GE and GE then swept the market by bundling the DXA with its ultrasound machines, MES went under about a year ago. The market news was that Hologic refused to renew MES' distributorship as well. But what about all the customers that own Hologic scanners? They have been left in the lurch with not even a token word from Hologic saying that they might try and do something to help.
There has been talk about a Siemens-Hologic tie-up but at least in our part of the world, nothing seems to have materialized.
Hologic needs to understand that in countries like India, its even more difficult to get third-party service people and they have a duty to do something about their user base here. In the meantime, most of us who were among the first Hologic customers have quietly shifted to Lunar scanners.
There is a company called RadMedical based in Bhopal that sells and installs CT tubes made by Dunlee.
Dunlee is a popular manufacturer and installer of replacement CT tubes as an alternative to the OEMs themselves. They sell tubes for almost all OEM scanners, except Siemens, and I don't know the reason for that.
RadMedical in a letter dated 23 July claims to have quite a few satisfed GE customers who have installed Dunleee tubes in their Sytec machines. I checked the prices on their website, but not being a GE customer, I am not sure what the difference actually translates to and whether there are issues with further service from GE, etc.
There is a news item based on the work of Kozel FA et al that suggests that fMRI may be better than a lie-detector test.
If the studies pan out then that would mean one more indication for MRI. However whether the police and the courts at least in our country will be willing to pay for these tests is another issue.
There is a recent NY Times article quoting an article from the American Journal of Nursing, about a patient who had second degree burns in an MRI scanner due to a nicotine patch.
When the mainstream press starts reporting these issues, it becomes imperative that radiologists be aware of these problems.
In an earlier post, this issue was covered in a little more detail as well.
