| The Hammersmith Hospital in West
London, home of the Royal Post-graduate Medical School has been the scene(发生地点)
of many innovations in medicine. It is now home(中心地,根据地) to the most expensive
and ambitious medical technology project ever in Britain, which this year will
make the Hammersmith the world's first fully digital hospital. The paper-free
office brought about by computerization and modern information technology is
familiar to(为……所熟悉) many office workers today. It has taken longer for the same
technology to be applied to medical imaging(医学影像学), because of the immense
computing power and high cost o the equipment required. But now the Hammersmith is becoming the first hospital in which all imaging data-- X-rays, ultrasonic ,CT and MRI images--are stored not on cumbersome, inflammable films but as digital data on optical discs. The first consequence of this can be seen in the air-conditioned computer room in the new building, where two compact(坚实的,结实的) cabinets each about as tall as a man and 0.6m wide are ready to store every X-ray and scan made at the Hammersmith in the next 16 years on optical discs(光盘). Space saving is the most obvious but not the most important advantage of the digital h6spital. A consultant conducting a clinic with a workstation linked by fibre optics(光纤) to the data store has no need of cumbersome trolleys loaded with patients' X-rays. The new technology considerably reduces the exposure to ionizing (电离的) radiation needed to get pictures doctors need, corresponding to reducing the slight but inevitable health risk that come with repeated X-rays. X-rays record their images on fluorescent(荧光的) plates, lasers read off and store the data and the plates are wiped clean to use again. This requires less radiation than conventional(常规的) imaging. The ability to enhance imaging also reduces the need for extra exposures. Another advantage is that any stored image can be sent to any of the hospital's 138 workstations in four seconds(soon that will come down(降落) to two seconds). Soon it will be possible to send it direct to other hospitals, or to computer screens in GP's(全科医生) clinics. PACS(图像存档通讯系统) is the most expensive single medical technology project ever funded in UK. Most of the money has come from the Department of Health, which has realized that it will benefit patients at the Hammersmith Hospital and those referred from elsewhere, in terms of(按照) better, quicker and safer diagnosis and treatment. Another technique uses radio a belled(用放射性同位素示踪的) white blood cells to guide doctors to the sites of hidden abscesses(脓肿) or other trouble spots. In the most innovative technique of all, interventional(干预的,介入的) radiology, doctors use tiny instruments at the ends of fine catheters(导管), inserted deep into the body under local anaesthetic, to perform a growing amount of microsurgery, viewed by surgeons—and patients if appropriate—in extremely clear detail. Every scrap(碎片,段) of unwanted image is electronically edited off the screen by the computer. The Hammersmith Hospital is also pioneering interventional radiography, in which doctor carry out microsurgery at the same time as they image the patients' organs in minute detail. The blocking or unblocking of arteries to prevent damage due to bleeding or thrombosis(血栓形成) is among the conditions now being treated in this way. |