Heartbeat March 2020

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
No, it’s a CT scanner
IMAGING
This month the imaging team at
City Hospital played host to an army
of high-vis clad engineers from
Siemens Healthineers who delivered
the newest addition to the imaging
department at the Birmingham
Treatment Centre (BTC), the new
computerised tomography (CT)
scanner.
Amongst the beeping fanfare of a crane,
engineers carefully peeled away the side
wall of the BTC, constructed a reinforced
platform and gently lifted, manoeuvred
and landed the huge scanner onto the
first floor to then be delicately pushed to
its new home in the imaging department.
CT scanners are innovative scanners
that create cross sectional images of the
body by rotating an x-ray machine round
the body and then use a computer to
reconstruct the multiple images into a
single three-dimensional image that lets
doctors look inside the body. Commonly,
CT scanners diagnose infections, fractures
and muscle disorders, as well as helping
to pinpoint masses and tumours. They
are sometimes even used to help guide
surgical procedures and biopsies.
To find out more about the scanner,
Heartbeat caught up with Phil Spencer,
Superintendent Radiographer and CT
Lead at our Trust. He said, “The newest
scanner we have had delivered is now the
fifth CT scanner we have at our disposal.
We have two at Sandwell and three at
City. This gives us plenty of resources offer
imaging support at short notice, as well
as resilience, should one of the scanners
need to be repaired.”
The newest addition to the imaging team’s
arsenal
Trust bowel-ed over by national
cancer audit results
The National Bowel Cancer Audit
publishes results about the care
and outcomes of patients with
bowel cancer in England and Wales.
Commissioned by the Healthcare
Quality Improvement Partnership as
part of the National Clinical Audit
and Patient Outcomes Programme,
this quality improvement programme
has been running for several years.
It is delivered jointly by the Clinical
Effectiveness Unit at the Royal College
of Surgeons of England, NHS Digital,
and the Association of Coloproctology
of Great Britain and Ireland.
Each year, a report is produced for trusts
in England and multidisciplinary teams in
Wales. Our most recent results published
for 2017-2018 show that we included
more patients than expected and we
performed positively in several areas.
Mr Torrance, Colorectal Consultant
remarked, “Our data collection is
significantly better than it has been in
the past and that has allowed us to share
that we are performing above average
compared to our local peers and nationally
in most measures. We stood out in the rate
of major surgery performed in potentially
curative patients. Whilst the national score
was 86 per cent, we scored 92 per cent
– 6 per cent above the national average.
We also perform significantly more cases
through keyhole surgery compared to
the rest of the country, with 89 per cent
attempted through keyhole surgery
compared to 69 per cent nationally. When
we combined this with our enhanced
recovery programme supported by our
anaesthetic colleagues, ward staff and
clinical nurse specialist team, we have
helped nearly half of patients go home
within 5 days of major surgery compared to
the national average of just over a third of
patients.”
When discussing how we’ve achieved
these results, Dr Torrance commented,
“We have invested in our data and
wanted to show just how well we’re
performing as a Trust. We now have
a dedicated person responsible for
managing our data. Tahira Sani from our
cancer services team has done a great job
at collating all of our data and allowing us
to show just how well we’re performing,
both regionally and nationally.”
Speaking to Heartbeat, Tahira
commented, “I have taken on the task of
compiling our clinical data. This involves
collating data from lots of different
sources including systems and meeting
notes. I was pleased to see how well we
performed as a Trust in comparison to
others locally and nationally.”
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