Tomorrow, hospitals across the world will be observing Radiology Day. Radiology is known as the "eye of medicine" - it is often the first step to receiving a diagnosis. And the radiologists at KHMH work tirelessly to service the entire country. But modern technology has advanced the way X-Rays, CT Scans, and ultrasounds are done, and the department has come a long way in the last few years.
Courtney Menzies stopped by KHMH today to hear from the team about how they're celebrating Radiology Day. Here's that story.
Almost 130 years ago, radiology was born, and it has since advanced from a scientific curiosity to a basic diagnostic tool.
Belize's largest hospital is celebrating with a radiology booth, where they document the history from its inception to present day usage, and all the advancements made along the way.
Dennis Babb, Radiologic Technologist, KHMH
"We're trying to highlight here the discovery of radiology, which was on the 8th of November in 1895, so basically what we're demonstrating here is all the innovations of X-Rays, or radiology itself, from the basic X-Rays that were discovered in 1895, to the advancement that we have done since then."
"Things have changed drastically, to be honest we used to do X-Rays the old fashion way, the analog way, so we used to take the X-Rays, develop them on a cassette, whereby they had a film inside then we had to put them through a machine that had chemicals in it that developed it. We jumped onto what we can see here, it's a CR machine, whereby we used to take the X-Rays to this and then we used to put it into the processing part of the machine and then it used to develop the images and pass them into digital X-Rays, so that was a little bit longer process. And now, since 2018, we have been introducing more digital radiology, which is direct digital, not like the CR, which is whereby we take the X-Rays and it appears automatically into a computer."
And for the KHMH, one of their most significant marks of progress was their CT Scan machine, which was, installed back in March of this year.
Dr Maximiliano Riverol, Radiologist, KHMH
"Most of it has happened within the last three years that we have gotten this advancement. In the last three years, the interventional procedures started and we got the new CT lab here."
"The 28 slices, the anatomy that you see, it's like you're seeing it clearly."
"We used to do everything manually, now as you do the CT, it just goes into the, even that, we got a PACS system from Taiwan so everything is digital. And all the images immediately when we do it from the CT X-Ray it goes into the PACS system, which we didn't have before."
And while the CT Scan Machine makes diagnoses a lot easier, this department says that the challenge now is with a lack of human resources. There are only 4 radiologists who must take on an overwhelming load to service the hospital's patients.
Dennis Babb, Radiologic Technologist, KHMH
"The workload has been going up everyday more and more, we can see it in basic X-Rays and also in CT Scans, for example we used to do maybe 120 CT Scans for the month and now we're up to 200, sometimes a little bit over and so X-Rays, we're seeing a significant growth on it. Radiology is the eye of medicine because we first capture images that will help doctors properly diagnose the patients and we're vital for this institution and for the country of Belize. By the means of doing proper studies, we diagnose the patients properly."
Dr Maximiliano Riverol, Radiologist, KHMH
"Because of time constraints, we usually do like up to 8, 10 CTs in the morning and sometimes it's more than that because those are appointments, we will try to satisfy 4/5 for the morning but then one patient might have up to 3 CTs to report and that takes time. Sometimes we have to tell the patients, we try to give the report in the evening but like in the private, they give up 72 hours to pick it up and sometimes we have to tell the patient we need time because sometimes we have to really sit down and analyze the patient study. And then that includes doing ultrasounds and the bigger load of the work is ultrasounds because we have to A&E, all the wards, and NICU and PICU. NICU, we have to do portable exams and sometimes because your load is so heavy in doing other ultrasounds, we have to leave, well, we don't have to leave, but we have to find the time to go do those babies and those babies are really complicated because they're neonatal babies that are born 30 weeks, 31 weeks and they're in intensive care and they're intubated."
But the radiology department staffers do the best they can with the resources available, and they're hoping that the public will recognize their efforts and help them to win a Facebook competition hosted by the Ministry of Health. They say they believe they've got what it takes to emerge on top.
Dennis Babb, Radiologic Technologist, KHMH
"What I can say is that we have very qualified technologists and doctors here in the radiology department, we have one of the most, well the most, I can say, the best CT Scan in the country, 128 slices with qualified personnel to do specific studies and studies that no other facility can do. Also, we're doing cardiac study that other facilities inBelize don't really provide. We're very qualified on them, we have received training, we have done extensive studies in the area. Also I believe we can win because we're a great facility that provides a great service and people know that. People of Belize know that we're the only referral hospital in the country."
Dr Maximiliano Riverol, Radiologist, KHMH
"We serve the poor people. And we try not to make anybody go away. This for us is important because people cannot get the services that they want out there, they have to come here, it's a must so this department is really the diagnosis of the country. We on a weekly basis, especially weekends, the districts, most complicated cases come here and we have to deal with them. We don't only deal with Belize City, but on a daily basis, if you would stand up behind there and see the amount of ambulances that come here from the districts, we're loaded with a lot of cases."
If you want to help out KHMH's radiology department, you can visit their Facebook page and give their post a "like."
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