UP-PGH Launches Advanced PET-CT Scanner to Revolutionize Diagnostics for Indigent Patients
New equipment for providing impoverished patients with high-quality medical care has been unveiled by the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH).
The UP-PGH released a statement announcing the launch of a PET-CT scan, a combined imaging capacity in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Computed Tomography (CT), for "more comprehensive diagnostics."
As part of the PGH long-term plan, the nation's largest contemporary government tertiary hospital also unveiled a new centralized intensive care unit (ICU) with space for 32 patients at once and a 128-slice CT scan facility.
In addition to pointing out the four-year wait for the first PET-CT scan facility, UP-PGH Director Dr. Gerardo Legaspi stated that the technique can currently handle up to eight patients per day and will be expanded to 15 once operations become routine.
"But now that it's here, we have leveled the field for poor patients, who will be using this machine 80 percent of the time versus 20 percent for paying patients," he said.
"We need this machine badly because it has become central to the diagnosis of cancer, a major concern of our health care system," he added.
While a CT scan employs X-rays to provide cross-sectional images of the body's internal structure, a PET scan uses tiny amounts of radioactive material injected into the bloodstream to identify some disorders early.
"A combined PET-CT scan can provide both functional and structural information in a single session for doctors to get a more comprehensive inside view of what's happening in the patient's body," the experts at UP-PGH said.
In order to provide patients outside of the PGH with access to medical interventions, UP-PGH is working with the Department of Health. Doctors enrolled in the UP-PGH residency program will train the DOH to operate new technology. Additionally, the hospital has implemented a transcranial magnetic stimulation unit for mental health conditions and intraoperative radiation for patients with breast cancer. Its rehabilitation medicine section now has a robotic gait trainer. The 2024 expenditure of P7.72 billion represents a sizeable amount of the UP budget.