Well...this has been a crazy week, to say the least! CT at both Main and Gateway have been extremely busy. Thursday we had a code called at the Main campus in CT. He was a 72 year-old gentleman from a regular medical telemetry bed. He was getting a CT Head without contrast due to altered mental status. We noticed he was very uneasy and unsettled while we were transferring him to the table. He then just wouldn't hold still, but after repeating the first axial group, we got what we needed after we shortened the scan time. As we entered the room, we noticed he had turned gray and was not breathing. We knew that the family down here were discussing his code status, but with no official changes in the chart, we called the code. Immediately, we had much help. Due to the fact we had an ICU patient down in another room, the ICU nurse jumped right and started compressions. I think everyone was glad that she happened to be there! After some work, the team got him back and transferred him to ICU. As we were completing this...the trauma pager went off. I guess when it rains, it pours. The trauma was a 20 year old who was cutting limbs and a limb came back and hit him in the face and then knocked him off the ladder...he did some major damage to his face and caused a SDH.
Friday, our scanner at Gateway went down again. So, I went over there to help with any issues with the ER and to make sure service was on it. It went down during a bone biopsy, but luckily the needle wasn't placed. We had to move him and then work on the 6 ER orders that we had before we could get the biopsy going again.
The biopsy patient was a 56 year old male with hepatocellular carcinoma with metatstatic disease. He now presented with terrible pain and CT showed that the disease had infiltrated his bone. The radiologist was asked to perform a right iliac wing bone biopsy. Believe it or not, it went very well. He made 3 passes in to the bone and the pathologist said that we had an excellent specimen. I've included an image that shows the needle location while we were passing through.
