Luton and Dunstable, UK - A Philips Allura Xper FD10 was selected for the new £5.5 million Cardiac Centre which opened at Luton and Dunstable Hospital in June of this year. The new Centre provides patients with a flexible and modern specialist cardiac catheterisation unit closer to home, avoiding the need for referral to other centres and the resulting delays to treatment.

The Allura FD10 cardiac system provides the Centre with the optimal balance of efficient workflow, superb imaging and low X-ray dose. Developed in cooperation with partner hospitals, the Allura FD10 system offers a high level of automatic positioning movements and exceptional image quality to support complex interventional cardiac and cardiovascular procedures, providing exceptional visualisation of cardiac anatomy in examinations where contrast media and X-ray dose really matter. Its unique DoseWise feature is active at every level, from SpectraBeam and pulsed fluoroscopy to a clear dose display to exploit every way of reducing X-ray dose whilst maintaining image quality.

The system at Luton and Dunstable comes with a host of innovations, such as  Xper Swing, which facilitates the capture of the required coronary images as a dual-axis rotation angiogram, resulting in fewer runs.  It also comes with Philips’ StentBoost, a simple, quick and efficient tool that enhances stent visualisation in the coronary arteries, showing the stent in relation to the the vessel walls during the procedure. This assists in placing the stent more accurately the first time, with the potential to shorten procedures and eliminate the need for additional ones.

The system has also been supplied with tools to facilitate excellent information management and clinical decision making. CVIS (Cardiovascular Information Management System) captures data during diagnostic, therapeutic and follow-up examinations, storing them in a single relational cardiovascular database. And Xcelera provides an integrated multi-modality image management system for cardiovascular information, giving access to multiple applications within a single flexible workspace which can be implemented in multiple locations throughout the hospital and across multi-sites. It improves clinical workflow by providing a single access point for advanced clinical applications, multi-modality images and reports.

The Cardiac Centre team has found the equipment to be intuitive and easy to use, which will help with training new staff who will be taken on as the workload increases in the coming months.

The hospital has invested £5.5 million in building the new Cardiac Centre and has secured the necessary funds to increase staffing and service costs. In order to create the best possible environment for patients, the hospital has started an appeal for an additional £1million to purchase items outside of the scope of NHS funding, but critical to creating the best possible environment for patients.