Local Hospital Offers Help To Cardiac Patients Unable To Get Powerful Diagnostic Test
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A local hospital is now using a device that will keep cardiac patients alive and allow them to get a diagnostic test they may need in the future.
A CRT-D or cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator can save your life if your heart needs help pumping in rhythm. But Dr. Matthew Goldstein, a cardiac electrophysiologist at Paoli Hospital, says it could prevent you from getting an MRI, because the defibrillator in your chest would be affected by the test's powerful magnetic energy.
"It would sometimes see it as dangerous heart rhythms which are what the defibrillator portion is designed to see and treat and sometimes shock the patient inappropriately," Goldstein says. "Even beyond that sometimes that energy was enough through very powerful MRI systems that the energy would go to the tip of the leads and damage the heart.
Now he's using a newly approved FDA defibrillator that won't react to the MRI energy and will allow patients to undergo a test that could give doctors critical information about a patient's health.
"The number of strokes missed on CT scan are innumerable as compared to MRI," Goldstein says. "There are numerous cancers that are completely missed with CT scanning that are found with MRI. Alzheimers can not be diagnosed with CT scan. It can only be found with an MRI."
