One-eyed flying patient treater touches down

A one-eyed flying patient treater will this morning touch down at Townsville University Hospital’s medical imaging department as part of a $5.8 million expansion.

The four-tonne scanner will this morning be lifted to the front entrance of the medical imaging department by crane before a team of 10 assemble the machine on Sunday.

Townsville Hospital and Health Board Chair Tony Mooney said the project marked a significant increase in medical investigation capacity for Townsville University Hospital.

“This is a major expansion in our capacity to do essential medical investigations to help diagnose a range of conditions including brain tumours, soft tissue injury, multiple sclerosis and infection,” he said.

“As North Queensland’s major university hospital it is crucial that we are able to deliver medical imaging services that keep up with demand.

“The department is currently operating weekends to get through our workload and this extra machine will allow us to meet that demand with capacity to grow into the future.”

Director of medical imaging Gary Kershaw said the department typically did about 5000 scans a year with treatment time ranging between 30 and two hours.

“MRIs incorporate impressive technology utilising extremely strong magnetic field (30,000 times the earth magnetic field) and radiofrequency pulses into a patient’s body to produce detailed images of any part of the anatomy,” he said.

“The new MR brings improved image resolution and scan speeds which will allow us to scan our sickest and youngest patients faster and will benefit all patients.

“Having access to a second MRI is an absolute red-letter day for our department and the team are excited to fire up the scanner early next year.”

Townsville University Hospital’s MRI machine is used to treat emergency department patients as well as inpatients and outpatients.

The project is funded by the state government with the construction work is being done by Paynters.