Well yesterday I went to James Cook Hospital for my MRI scan, and for those who don’t know me, let me tell you I hate those machines I get so jumpy because they are so noisy. Therefore to my instant relief when I was told I could have a General Anaesthetic I was happier to have one, and when I say happier I don’t mean I was over the moon believe me, because having an anaesthetic makes me sick for hours if not a couple of days, so you can imagine my apprehension facing me yesterday morning, but I thought well I have to have it done so might as well get on with it.
6.30am came and I got up and sorted waiting for my taxi to pick me up at 7.15 and off we went said bye to mum (it was like the middle of the night for us lol) anyway got to the hospital in good time and I made my way to the day unit ward only to find the door was locked and I couldn’t reach the intercom (why doesn’t that surprise me!!!! In a hospital of all places!!!)
Anyway I managed to find a member of staff who kindly took me to the main x-ray dept, I was booked in and taken through to the small ward to complete all of the paperwork and wait for the anaesthetist, who was very nice and explained everything to me, because I had a couple of questions with regard to the metal in my spine and the magnets in the MRI, my understanding was that when the scan hit the metal part it would bounce off the magnet and distort the image, if not corrupt it all together and to all intensive purposes I was right, but they said that they should be able to get enough of an image to see what’s going on before I have the artificial disc surgery.
I then waited for a couple of hours for my turn and then I was allowed to go down, I was put to sleep really quickly and for the first time in I don’t know how many years I wasn’t sick when I came round, I don’t know what he gave me but whatever it was I will be asking for it when I have my main surgery. As far as I know the scan went well and I was allowed home on the afternoon where I slept it off and tried to eat a little bit, I didn’t think green jelly could taste so nice lol but there you go!!! I now just have to wait to get the results, hope it won’t be too long.
Showing posts with label MRI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MRI. Show all posts
27 March 2009
13 March 2009
Brave two-year-old faces hours of spinal surgery
Mar 3 2009 by Helen Rae, Evening Chronicle
A LITTLE boy who was born with an extra half-vertebrae is set to have a major operation to correct his spine.
Jack Sundin, two, of Whitley Bay, could not have had a more difficult start to life.
He was born with a range of serious health problems, including congenital scoliosis hemivertebrae, a curvature of the spine that is the result of an extra half-vertebrae. Now consultants at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital have told his parents Lisa, 33, and Alistair, 43, that their son’s spine is curving quicker than expected.
In the next few weeks the youngster will need an MRI and CT scan before the six-hour operation.
Speaking from their home in Hertford Close, Beaumont Park, Mrs Sundin said: “We found out before Christmas that Jack’s spine was out by 33° and within 10 weeks that has moved to 45°.
“We’ve been told he needs to have an operation as soon as possible and there’s a 50% chance there could be other medical problems as his curved spine could be putting pressure on his internal organs.
“We knew Jack would need an operation on his back in the future but we never expected it to be this quick.”
After the operation Jack, who also lives with his siblings Hollie Graham-Scott, eight, and James Holmes, 14, will be put in a back brace.
Jack was born prematurely at 32 weeks and was also diagnosed with a hole in the heart and defective valves – and tracheo-oesophageal fistula, where the bottom end of the food pipe is joined to the windpipe.
Within days of being born, he had a major operation to rectify his foodpipe abnormality. Last April the youngster had open heart surgery at the Freeman Hospital. Jack has also been diagnosed with chronic lung disease.
A LITTLE boy who was born with an extra half-vertebrae is set to have a major operation to correct his spine.
Jack Sundin, two, of Whitley Bay, could not have had a more difficult start to life.
He was born with a range of serious health problems, including congenital scoliosis hemivertebrae, a curvature of the spine that is the result of an extra half-vertebrae. Now consultants at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital have told his parents Lisa, 33, and Alistair, 43, that their son’s spine is curving quicker than expected.
In the next few weeks the youngster will need an MRI and CT scan before the six-hour operation.
Speaking from their home in Hertford Close, Beaumont Park, Mrs Sundin said: “We found out before Christmas that Jack’s spine was out by 33° and within 10 weeks that has moved to 45°.
“We’ve been told he needs to have an operation as soon as possible and there’s a 50% chance there could be other medical problems as his curved spine could be putting pressure on his internal organs.
“We knew Jack would need an operation on his back in the future but we never expected it to be this quick.”
After the operation Jack, who also lives with his siblings Hollie Graham-Scott, eight, and James Holmes, 14, will be put in a back brace.
Jack was born prematurely at 32 weeks and was also diagnosed with a hole in the heart and defective valves – and tracheo-oesophageal fistula, where the bottom end of the food pipe is joined to the windpipe.
Within days of being born, he had a major operation to rectify his foodpipe abnormality. Last April the youngster had open heart surgery at the Freeman Hospital. Jack has also been diagnosed with chronic lung disease.
More surgery is needed 6 years on!
Well it is exactly 6 years since I had my surgery for Scoliosis and as you know I am waiting to have further surgery in the form of artificial disc replacement. Anyway following my recent consultation I have now been sent a copy of the x-rays that where taken on the day. Yesterday I also had a call from the hospital about my MRI under anesthetic and I am pleased to say I dont have to wait too long because it is the 26th March so I am getting ever closer to hopefully stopping the pain I have.
08 February 2009
MRI scans can predict effects of multiple sclerosis 'flare-ups' on optic nerve
One of the most pernicious aspects of multiple sclerosis (MS) - its sheer unpredictability - may finally be starting to yield to advanced medical imaging techniques.
Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report online in the journal Neurology that an approach known as magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) allowed them to estimate three months in advance the chronic effects of inflammation of the optic nerve. The condition occurs most often as a result of MS, a neurodegenerative disorder that can present with an extremely broad variety of symptoms that range from vision loss and other sensory damage to muscle weakness, spasticity or paralysis to depression, sleep loss or incontinence. MS affects an estimated 500,000 Americans.
"We see this as part of a battery of tests we hope to give patients within the next decade to help our clinical assessment and tailor it to an optimal treatment," says lead author Robert T. Naismith, M.D., assistant professor of neurology and a staff physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "It may also help further refine our basic understanding of MS in terms of expanding our insights into where and how damage occurs and why it can affect patients differently."
Scientists believe MS results from misdirected immune system attacks against the nervous system. Symptoms occur in bouts that vary unpredictably in nature, severity, duration and frequency. Symptoms of optic nerve inflammation, known as optic neuritis, include loss of vision, blurring or fogginess and pain in the affected eye.
Regular MRI scans can detect optic neuritis but offer no information on its severity and potential lasting consequences for a patient's vision.
Currently in use clinically to detect and follow up on strokes, DTI uses a rapid series of MRI scans to track water diffusion in tissue. Noting that inflammation and the cell damage it causes would likely alter water diffusion in the affected tissues, Naismith and his colleagues hypothesized that this information might allow them to assess the severity and potential for lasting damage of MS flare-ups. Over the past five years, the new paper's senior authors, Sheng-Kwei Song, Ph.D., associate professor of radiology, and Anne Cross, M.D., professor of radiology, did much of the quantitative work in animal models of MS. The new data, based upon this successful collaborative history, are the first to show that DTI can produce potentially useful predictive information in humans.
For the study, researchers used DTI to image the optic nerves of 12 healthy volunteers, 12 patients who had begun to suffer from optic neuritis within the past month and 28 patients with a history of earlier outbreaks. They gave participants with optic neuritis or a history of it detailed assessments of their visual health, including tests of visual acuity and the thickness and conductivity of their optic nerves.
In the healthy subjects, DTI scans showed that the water diffusion along the length of the subjects' optic nerves, a characteristic known as axial diffusivity, averaged about 1.66 micrometers squared per millisecond. In three patients with acute optic neuritis, those levels went down as much as 0.45 micrometers squared per millisecond.
"As the inflammation breaks down the structure of the axons or branches of the optic nerves, the normal water diffusion in this direction is impeded," Naismith explains. "After several months, though, the debris is cleared away, and this value and another characteristic known as radial diffusivity then start to increase."
In acute patients, the initial decrease in axial diffusivity brought on by optic neuritis correlated with decreased sensitivity to visual contrast one month and three months later. In patients with a history of optic neuritis, the increase in radial diffusivity was a good predictor of lower scores on several tests of visual health. Scientists plan to assess the acute patients again one year after the onset of symptoms to see if the scan results continue to be predictive.
Researchers are currently working to expand the approach to assess MS attacks in the brain and spinal cord.
"The optic nerve was our proof of concept, because it's structurally a very simple tract with all the nerves going one way, like a one-way street," he says. "The next step is taking the technique into the brain and spinal cord, where there are many different streets crossing. Measuring damage and correlating it to dysfunction will be more complex as a result."
http://www.medicine.wustl.edu/
Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report online in the journal Neurology that an approach known as magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) allowed them to estimate three months in advance the chronic effects of inflammation of the optic nerve. The condition occurs most often as a result of MS, a neurodegenerative disorder that can present with an extremely broad variety of symptoms that range from vision loss and other sensory damage to muscle weakness, spasticity or paralysis to depression, sleep loss or incontinence. MS affects an estimated 500,000 Americans.
"We see this as part of a battery of tests we hope to give patients within the next decade to help our clinical assessment and tailor it to an optimal treatment," says lead author Robert T. Naismith, M.D., assistant professor of neurology and a staff physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "It may also help further refine our basic understanding of MS in terms of expanding our insights into where and how damage occurs and why it can affect patients differently."
Scientists believe MS results from misdirected immune system attacks against the nervous system. Symptoms occur in bouts that vary unpredictably in nature, severity, duration and frequency. Symptoms of optic nerve inflammation, known as optic neuritis, include loss of vision, blurring or fogginess and pain in the affected eye.
Regular MRI scans can detect optic neuritis but offer no information on its severity and potential lasting consequences for a patient's vision.
Currently in use clinically to detect and follow up on strokes, DTI uses a rapid series of MRI scans to track water diffusion in tissue. Noting that inflammation and the cell damage it causes would likely alter water diffusion in the affected tissues, Naismith and his colleagues hypothesized that this information might allow them to assess the severity and potential for lasting damage of MS flare-ups. Over the past five years, the new paper's senior authors, Sheng-Kwei Song, Ph.D., associate professor of radiology, and Anne Cross, M.D., professor of radiology, did much of the quantitative work in animal models of MS. The new data, based upon this successful collaborative history, are the first to show that DTI can produce potentially useful predictive information in humans.
For the study, researchers used DTI to image the optic nerves of 12 healthy volunteers, 12 patients who had begun to suffer from optic neuritis within the past month and 28 patients with a history of earlier outbreaks. They gave participants with optic neuritis or a history of it detailed assessments of their visual health, including tests of visual acuity and the thickness and conductivity of their optic nerves.
In the healthy subjects, DTI scans showed that the water diffusion along the length of the subjects' optic nerves, a characteristic known as axial diffusivity, averaged about 1.66 micrometers squared per millisecond. In three patients with acute optic neuritis, those levels went down as much as 0.45 micrometers squared per millisecond.
"As the inflammation breaks down the structure of the axons or branches of the optic nerves, the normal water diffusion in this direction is impeded," Naismith explains. "After several months, though, the debris is cleared away, and this value and another characteristic known as radial diffusivity then start to increase."
In acute patients, the initial decrease in axial diffusivity brought on by optic neuritis correlated with decreased sensitivity to visual contrast one month and three months later. In patients with a history of optic neuritis, the increase in radial diffusivity was a good predictor of lower scores on several tests of visual health. Scientists plan to assess the acute patients again one year after the onset of symptoms to see if the scan results continue to be predictive.
Researchers are currently working to expand the approach to assess MS attacks in the brain and spinal cord.
"The optic nerve was our proof of concept, because it's structurally a very simple tract with all the nerves going one way, like a one-way street," he says. "The next step is taking the technique into the brain and spinal cord, where there are many different streets crossing. Measuring damage and correlating it to dysfunction will be more complex as a result."
http://www.medicine.wustl.edu/
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