Daily Times

LAHORE: The Government of Punjab has decided to purchase two state-of-the-art machines including cardiovascular computed tomography (CT) and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC).

Purchasing cost of these machines has been estimated at Rs 671 million for both machines and two PC-1s have also been submitted to Planning & Development (P&D) Department for approval.

Well informed sources in Specialized Healthcare and Medical Education told Daily Times that there was only one CT angiography machine working at PIC in the last eight years. This machine was purchased and installed during the financial year 2006-2007. The existing non-invasive cardiac diagnostic facilities cannot keep up with the increasing workload of Indoor/OPD patients.

There is an urgent need of an additional cardiac CT angiography to provide the preventive measures on a primary basis for the coming patients from far flung area of the Punjab and all of Pakistan. Hospital administration estimated Rs 300 million cost of latest CT machine and Rs 35.6 million would required for pay and allowance of staff and in respect of annual operational cost.

Workload of invasive and non-invasive diagnostic facilities has increased dramatically during last the ten years. The existing non-invasive diagnostic facilities at PIC are not sufficient for the increasing load of cardiac patients.

A new cardiovascular CT would be a new technological advancement which can provide excellent information about the status of coronary arteries in a non-invasive way in a very short time. The device is capable of performing non-invasive coronary angiography, which has been found to be very cost effective, low risk and financially viable.

In addition, cardiovascular CT is capable of performing dynamic cardiac perfusion studies, gated cardiac studies as well as calcium scoring of arteries.