Hospital da Luz Coimbra continues to invest in its imaging technological equipment and, after the already announced digital mammography machine and state-of-the-art magnetic resonance, has now available an ultra-fast dual-energy CT. This is a high-end equipment, unique in the region. “This new CT performs ultra-fast non-invasive angiography with high precision, enabling higher accuracy of diagnosis with lower radiation doses (low-dose CT). It allows, for example, coronary artery angiography in one second”, explains Filipe Caseiro Alves, the clinical director of the hospital and of its respective Centre of Medical Imaging. In recent years, the advances in CT technology have been huge, with a reduction in the doses of radiation – today similar to those of conventional radiography – and higher speed in images capture, with the possibility to identify material composition. This is the case of the equipment now available at Hospital da Luz Coimbra, which produces simultaneously two levels of radiation. “Since the different structures of the human body react diversely to those two levels of radiation, it is possible to distinguish them electronically. This enables to separate the administered contrast from the remaining structures – for example, to detect the composition of renal calculi, a fundamental factor for the type of treatment to prescribe”, adds the physician. The investment in this equipment is part of the “strategic option of Grupo Luz Saúde viewing to provide Hospital da Luz Coimbra with the most recent imaging technology, enlarging the range of clinical services offered to all those who resort to this unit, mainly in the areas of cardiology, urology and lung cancer screening with low-dose CT”, refers, on the other hand, Pedro Beja Afonso, the hospital managing director.
