A hospital in Washington D.C. is one of the first in the country to use a new state of the art imaging device called the Statscan. It's a rapid body scan that can get pictures of the entire body in 13 seconds. So, within minutes, doctors can put together a clear image of the whole body, allowing them to make a diagnosis and order treatment faster than ever before.
"Let's say a bad motor vehicle crash patient, normally it would take 30-45 minutes, to get all the different specific X-rays, and this film we can probably get in less than two minutes, the total body X-ray from head to toe," says Dr. Dennis Wang, with Washington Hospital Center.
"When you can do patients at a rate of one every two minutes, that's an incredible breakthrough in terms of speed. This way you are able to get all the patients assessed in a very short period of time," says Dr. James Jelinek, with Washington Hospital Center.
Dr. Jelinek says in the event of a mass casualty, like a terrorist attack, the Statscan could evaluate patients five to 10 times faster than conventional testing. One other benefit: because the images are all digital, they can been seen on viewing stations throughout the hospital, including the operating room, within a matter of minutes.
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