After a long gap, the CT scan facility would soon start at Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) hospital. A new Coronary CT Angiography machine is being installed in the department of radiology of the GDMC and the machine would start is operation in two weeks. The principal of the GDMC, Dr Ashutosh Sayana said that 64 slice machine is highly advanced and apart from CT, it would also be used for doing angiography and other diagnostic process. He said that the works like space selection and power supply for the machine has been completed.
It is worth mentioning here that this important radio diagnostic machine of the biggest Government hospital of the state is non-functional from February 2019. In its visits to GDMC, the teams of Medical Council of India (MCI) had expressed annoyance over the absence of CT scan facility in the hospital.
Interestingly the GDMC has also started a diploma course in radio diagnosis and considering the patient load in the hospital at least two such machines are needed here.
The old CT scan machine was installed in the hospital in the year 2004 and as per norms it should have been replaced after ten years. However this machine was used beyond its term due to which it became prone to repeated malfunctioning. When this machine become non functional in February 2019, the state administration finally accepted the long standing demand of the GDMC hospital to replace this machine with a more advanced one.
More than 50 CT scans were done by the lone machine daily when it was operational and in absence of this facility the patients are forced to visit expensive private hospitals and diagnostic centres to get the CT done. In absence of CT scan facility, the doctors in some cases were advising MRI scans for the patients resulting in extra load on the MRI machine.