Story URL: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=142393
Story Retrieval Date: 2/9/2010 7:49:28 PM CST
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Bringing imagination to medical imaging
by Lauren Drell
Oct 15, 2009
Lauren Drell/MEDILL
Take a virtual tour of Wilmette's Advocate Lutheran General Imaging Center.
It's not the typical option you expect from your mammography technician, but it’s standard procedure at a Wilmette radiology facility.
Gone are the days of institutional white walls, cold hands, cluttered countertops and impersonal care. Philips Healthcare’s Ambient Experience takes a few tips from the spas to create a scan experience that assuages a patient's fears and anxieties.
Tucked away in a strip mall—next to, ironically, a tanning salon—the Advocate Lutheran General Imaging Center offers multimodal (MRI, CT scan, ultrasound and mammography) imaging services that feature the Ambient Experience and a calming environment.
Patients can choose music, lighting and a vacation vignette to entertain—or distract—them during their screening. There are travel themes for adults craving an exotic getaway and cartoons for children looking to escape the moment. Warm robes and blankets await patients in each changing room, and abundant plants boost oxygen flow throughout the building. Screening costs are billed through the hospital just as a conventional screening would be.
Dr. John Anastos, chairman of radiology at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, said the ambient experience concept was touted as a futuristic approach in 2003.
The “future” arrived in Wilmette in 2006 and the number of Ambient Experience installations has grown steadily nationwide ever since. Anastos said some patients perceive the ambient approach to radiology screening as a break from their busy lives. They can relax, be screened at their own pace, and get results that same day. Most of all, they can enjoy the experience.
“This is how health care used to be,” said Dr. Lisa Laurent, a radiologist, referring to the degree of approachability and patient satisfaction at ALGIC.
Many patients express “unabashed incredulity that a center like this even exists,” she added.
Laurent said the concept of the Ambient Experience originated in pediatric screening units to eliminate the use of sedative injections to keep children motionless. The method soon caught on among adults, too, and there are now 140 installations of the Ambient Experience worldwide, according to Philips Healthcare.
“All of these tests are stressful for everybody—mammography, CT, MRI,” Laurent said.
And there are clinical reasons for the Ambient Experience, not limited to the serene, spa-like environment.
Studies show that the need for sedation (and the pain of an injection) is decreased. Also, the readings are often improved the first time around, especially with children, who remain still thanks to the ambient distraction, according to Laurent and Anastos.
“They’re so preoccupied with what’s going on in the Ambient Experience that they don’t need [sedation],” Laurent said.
Camilla Nix, the manager of ALGIC, said the imaginative suites significantly reduce patient stress and anxiety.
“Claustrophobia is such an issue in the MRI, so this helps [people] relax,” she said. “Especially in mammography, the patients are very anxious, they do not want to have this test done!”
Merle Zaitz, 74, went to the facility for her first-ever CT chest scan. While she said she’s not the type to get nervous before such a procedure, she said anyone feeling anxious or intimidated would relax in this environment.
“This would definitely put them at ease,” Zaitz said. “It’s so unintimidating, it’s not a hospital-type setting.”
So take a deep breath, relax and imagine where you’d like to go today. Don’t worry, this trip will only take a few minutes.
