VIDEO: Contrast media shortage impacting cardiac CT imaging
Eric Williamson, MD, MSCCT, the president of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) and professor of radiology at Mayo Clinic, explains how the iodine contrast shortage is causing issues for cardiac CT imaging. He discusses ways imagers can stretch their iodine contrast supplies and some technologies to help conserve contrast.
He explained how hospitals are trying to reduce their usage of iodine contrast for CT imaging. This includes working with hospital pharmacies to break down large packaging into smaller vials or syringes to prevent waste. Williamson said less dose also can be used and CT system kVp can be reduced to help improve the iodine visualization on low contrast scans.
Williamson is also associate chair for radiology informatics at Mayo Clinic Rochester and supervises the radiology artificial intelligence program at Mayo. He is the former division chair of cardiovascular radiology and medical director of CT operations at Mayo Clinic. He serves as co-director of Mayo Clinic's structural heart disease imaging lab.
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