|
Musculoskeletal Radiology at Johns Hopkins
Multimodal Diagnostic Imaging & Image-Guided Intervention
John Carrino came from Harvard, where he was clinical director of interventional MRI at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to direct the newly established section of musculoskeletal radiology.
The section provides multimodality diagnostic imaging and image-guided interventional services in areas including sports medicine, tumors and arthritis. It represents a departure for the Department of Radiology, which historically has been organized around individual modalities instead of organ systems or disease processes, notes Carrino. “This has been particularly true at Hopkins, which has always had the innovators, the early adopters, and the latest and greatest technology.”
Not that that has changed. Carrino helped to bring in a 3T field strength, 70 cm wide, open-bore MRI, the first of its kind, which can accommodate large people like professional athletes and others who for various reasons such as claustrophobia cannot tolerate standard MRI.
“We are attempting to reduce the health care disparities that may exist for patients who had to settle for lower quality, conventional open imaging,” says Carrino.
Using new magnets with specialized coils, the musculoskeletal team now can provide high-quality images of the small joints—hands, wrists, feet and ankles— and cartilage, body parts that have heretofore eluded detailed depiction.
Other subspecialty services include ultrasound for joint and tendon therapies, functional joint imaging (made possible by a 320-slice CT scanner, another first of its kind), MR arthrography and MR neurography.
Specialized services like these are offered at Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. “Just as providers might refer patients to Hopkins to see subspecialty clinicians, so should they consider referring patients for subspecialty imaging when needed,” says Carrino.
Using state-of-the-art teleradiology technology, musculoskeletal radiology also delivers subspecialty musculoskeletal image interpretation to community imaging facilities and referring physicians through a partnership with American Radiology Services.
Call 410-502-2831 to refer a patient;
http://msk.rad.jhmi.edu, for info.
---Neil Grauer
|
