![]() Karlson and his wife planned to stay in New York for the weekend following his CTA test at Lenox Hill on a Friday. Also, as opposed to many lower-generation CT scanners, this machine gives you a very detailed anatomical picture.” “That made me feel more comfortable because one of the arguments of following any disease by CT scan is the downside of accumulating radiation dose. “Because of the quick amount of time, the radiation dose is much less,” Karlson adds. The surgeon was impressed by the scanner’s capabilities: It could scan the heart in two beats-less than 2 seconds. Lenox Hill got the scanner as part of an advanced trial, says Dominic Smith, vice president of global marketing for CT and nuclear medicine for Philips Healthcare.Įpstein suggested that “as a surgeon who is anatomically oriented and very concrete, I might want to, rather than just going through a routine stress test and get circumstantial evidence, have a CTA on their new, low-dose scanner,” Karlson says. Epstein eventually began working at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, N.Y., and the facility had acquired the Brilliance iCT 256-slice CT, which Philips Healthcare launched at RSNA 2009. “I knew him and through other medical acquaintances here had kept in contact,” Karlson says. Karlson kept in touch with a colleague, Neal Epstein, MD, who had been chief of radiology when he practiced with Karlson at Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford. He had no hint anything was wrong, was quite active, and did not smoke. Lifetime radiation dose is a growing concern among the medical community, and there were no indications that Karlson needed to take the risk. Karlson had been reluctant to undergo coronary CT angiography (CTA) because of the radiation dose associated with the imaging study. Even though you feel fine, I think you need to be checked for heart disease because you’re getting to be that age.’” Like most physicians’ wives, she had to be persistent about his being checked-and persistent she was for six months or so. “When I was 55,” Karlson explains, “my wife said to me, ‘You’ve got a very stressful job. ![]() That’s why Karlson, 57, credits his wife and a CT scanner with a far lower associated radiation dose for saving his life. But when the patient has no symptoms, is physically active, and is a physician, there’s no reason to suspect there’s a problem. A cardiac surgeon followed the advice of his wife and a radiologist friend-and it probably saved his life.Īs a cardiac thoracic surgeon, Karl Karlson, MD, of Hartford, Conn., certainly knows how to recognize and treat heart disease.
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