Dan Palomino, MD Speaks About a CT Scan Video Transcript

A CT scan or a CAT scan is a specialized x-ray. Instead of sending a single x-ray beam through the body like in a chest x-ray or a knee x-ray, a CT scan sends a beam with multiple angles at the same time to get a clear picture of the body. Your doctor would order the CAT scan -- usually your family doctor or a specialist you may be seeing. When you arrive to the CT scan department, depending on what your doctor orders, you may or may not have an IV in your arm for x-ray dye. You'll go into the CT scan room, and a technologist will meet you there and prepare you for the scan. So they'll put you on the table, tell you what we're going to do, and administer IV dye, or give you some dye to drink if necessary. The scan itself actually, once we start, takes about 15 minutes or less.

The x-ray dye in the IV is used to allow the organs to enhance. That means they light up on the CT scan so we can see the tissue of the organ, like the liver, or the spleen, in greater detail.  So, for example, if your doctor was looking for an infection or a tumor in the liver, we would recommend that IV dye was given. So a CT scan can really take a picture of any part of the body. So a radiologist looking at your scan can look inside your body without making a cut. So some of the things that we do scan for, we look for bleeding in the brain, infection or tumors in the body, or even injury to the body like a torn spleen or broken bone.

So at Miami Valley Hospital and the other imaging centers run through Miami Valley Hospital Premier Health Network, we have specially trained technicians and physicians to administer your CAT scan so when you get your scan done the technologists make sure that you're comfortable, the scan is done safely and efficiently  and then your doctor gets a report within 24 hours and, if necessary, your doctor will get a report right away -- right after the scan is done.