THE UNIT
Cardiology Imaging
Cardiology is the investigation and treatment of the heart and diseases of the heart. The heart is a complex organ and is the hardest working organ in the body. The heart is fundamentally a specialised muscle pumping blood around the body, beating, on average, 100,000 times a day. It consists of a series of chambers and valves for the movement of blood and is controlled by a very highly specialized network of electrical fibres which conduct the small electrical impulses throughout the heart muscle causing it to contract and therefore 'beat' in a regular way and according to the bodies demand for blood. The heart also has its own complicated system of small blood vessels providing itself with oxygen rich blood supply to cope with the demands put upon it by the body.
The electrical system, coronary arteries, muscle and heart valves are all susceptible to disease. Here at the Wellington, we have the Specialists and the specialized methods of diagnosis and treatments' for many types of Cardiac diseases and are proud to offer a comprehensive range of investigations' and treatments for the heart and its components.
The Cardiology department provides a whole range of cardiac testing and a number of wide and varied investigations and treatments are carried out in our 3 state of the art cardiac catheter labs.
Disturbances of the electrical or conduction system, slow of fast heart rhythms, can be investigated using ambulatory or implantable ECG monitors. Stress testing may be useful to investigate some arrhythmias. More invasive investigations may include electrophysiological studies. Should treatment other than drug therapy be required, pacemaker therapy is available for forms of slow heart rhythms or ablation therapy for some forms of fast arrhythmias.
Narrowing or blockages of the coronary artery system can cause a lack of oxygen getting to the heart muscle, this is called ischemia and can manifest itself as angina or in more serious cases as a heart attack. The coronary artery system can be looked at invasively using coronary arteriography. Some narrowing's can be opened up using balloon (angioplasty) treatments followed by stenting of the narrowing to help keep the artery open. In most cases patients with any form of cardiac disease will undergo a series of other investigations to obtain as much information about the structure and function of the heart as possible. This may be echocardiography which is a scan utilizing very high frequency sound waves (ultra sound) to build up a very clear and informative image of the heart. A lot of information can be extracted from an echocardiogram.
Whilst a traditional coronary angiogram is the gold standard for defining the anatomy of the coronary arteries and treating coronary artery disease, our multi-slice CT scanner offers a new non-invasive way of evaluating the coronary arteries. At the Wellington Hospital our referrers and patients have access to a state of the art GE 64-slice Lightspeed VCT scanner which is currently one of the fastest multi-slice scanners available.
In our MRI department we have two scanners (1.0T and 1.5T) on which we can perform scans to evaluate cardiac anatomy, functionality and measurement of the Left Ventricle, and perfusion of the myocardium.
For more information on MRI and CT please visit: www.thewellingtonimagingunit.com