Photo courtesy of Koninklijke Philips NV
We are pleased to award a grant of £159,000 to West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust Charity towards the purchase of a new interventional radiology “super” scanner. It is hoped the equipment will benefit 1,400 patients per year, doubling the current number being treated with Interventional Radiology (IR) and preventing patients from being transferred to other hospitals further away.
IR is a form of image-guided surgery which enables clinicians to carry out minimally invasive pinhole surgery. It uses real-time and hi-tech CT, MRI and X-ray images to guide surgical equipment into parts of the body that are otherwise only reached by open surgery. IR is less painful than open surgery and only requires local anaesthetic and means that patients are likely to experience reduced blood loss and be at lower risk of infection.
The scanner will sit at the heart of a new IR suite at Watford General. We look forward to hearing about the impact this new equipment will have on those in need.