St. Vincent Health has decided to go with Eovist contrast for Liver MRI scans. We now have a new protocol where we inject early, run a few scans, but must wait at least 20 minutes before running our post Lava scans. There have been many of times where I would have to bring the patient out and sit in there with them hoping they don't move until the 20 minutes were up! This contrast is only for Liver MRI's and demonstrates the pathologies of the liver more clearly.
Today, I have a patient coming in for a Liver scan and I look forward to using the new contrast and protocol. What I am NOT looking forward to, is starting her IV. I guess she came in on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and no one was able to get her IV started. So, they must have all of the confidence in the world in me, because they re-scheduled her on a Saturday and I am the only one here!!!! I may or may not be doing her test! Luckily for me there is no one else scheduled after her!

I had a very interesting case the other night. I was scanning a 12 yr old girl's complete spine for scoliosis. While I was scanning her not only did she have the most drastic S curved spine I have ever seen, but then I realized she also had a synrinx throughout her entire spine. Each of my sagitals for the thoracic spine had to be done in two parts to stay with the alignment of her spine. My facility requires the technologist to scan each part of the spine in separate sections unless they are looking for metastatic disease. Also, since I discovered the synrinx I also had to inject. It is always a challenge to explain to any child and or parent the importance of the contrast for the exam without causing them to worry. I think even more of a challenge in this situation was trying to convince the young girl to lay still so I could just continuously scan without having to realign each scan up for her extreme curvature. She was watching a movie and didn't move at all during her test and injection. I was very lucky!