Dodge City Medical Center Observation

Before taking this class, I had never seen a CT scan or machine before. I chose to take an on-site visit for this project because of that fact. I visited the Dodge City Medical Center for my on-site visit. While there I was able to see many different things that I had never seen before. I saw many different CT scans specifically for this class, but I was also able to see an ultrasound of the abdomen. I was surprised that I could pick out the different organs on the ultrasound. I also was able to see a mammogram during the time that I visited this facility. This was interesting, but I realized that that was definitely not something that I would want to do every day. Some of the CT scans that I was able to observe were CT scan of the head,

The reason for doing the CT scan of the spine was that the patient had come in a couple of weeks before to have this same procedure done. It only lasted for a couple of weeks so they were back to do it again. What the technician was doing with the scan was preparing this patient to receive an epidural steroid injection into their L4 and L5 vertebrae. I thought that it was really cool how the technician was able to measure the location of where each needle needed to go from the cross-sectional CT image that he had taken with the scanner. After the doctor had placed the needles where he wanted them the technician took another CT image while the needles were still in the patients back to see if the doctor had placed all three of the needles exactly where he wanted them. I thought it was really cool to see how different the needles looked on the CT image compared to the other tissues in the surrounding area. When the doctor had decided that he was satisfied with the location of the needles they injected a steroid into the joints of the vertebrae. Some of the other CT scan that I saw that day were very interesting to me