MANSFIELD — A $5.8-million upgrade in the OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital will help cardiovascular surgeons deliver personalized care close to home.
New interventional lab imaging equipment has helped patients experiencing aneurysms receive more efficient and safer care, said Dr. Kaleb Kohler, a vascular surgeon for OhioHealth.
“We’ve already been fixing aneurysms with our lowest amount of radiation for patients and physicians, and lowest amount of contrast to light up the blood vessels, just in the first month of using it,” he said.
Replacing the old equipment took about three months of construction, Kohler said. Surgeons have been using the equipment with live cases since late January.
“It’s brand new, and in use every day,” Kohler said. “We’re not always using it for aortas, we can also use it for blockages in the legs or arms as well.”
Interventional radiologists, electrophysiology physicians and neurosurgeons are also able to use the new machine.
“In the simplest terms, it’s effectively a fancy X-ray machine,” Kohler said. “We inject contrast medication that lights up the blood vessels in an X-ray, and that allows us to put in stents or balloons.
“This machine also has higher-end software that we can use for the big blood vessel in the belly for the aorta to fix aneurysms and do complex things in that space.”
Kohler said the lab equipment is mostly used for scheduled procedures but can be useful in emergencies too. The advanced imaging software supports more complex procedures so patients can stay in Mansfield for surgeries and care.
“Our former equipment was 15 to 20 years old,” Kohler said.
“More importantly, what it means is we can keep those complex cases here locally instead of sending patients to Columbus or to Cleveland. We used to have to send some of them to Riverside, but now we’re able to keep most of them here.”
Kohler said older equipment at OhioHealth Mansfield didn’t produce a clear enough picture for more advanced surgeries, like an abdominal aneurysm.
“To fix an aneurysm, we can go in with large stents, but as we get into the complicated parts of the blood vessels where it goes to the kidneys or guts — that’s when you need the high-end imaging and software that lets us see those things and restructure more safely,” he said.
The new imaging equipment and software is just phase one of a $14.9 million investment in OhioHealth Mansfield.
OhioHealth Senior Media and Public Relations Consultant Katie Lowe also highlighted plans to convert an old electrophysiology lab into a new cat scan (CT) lab with new software to improve speed and imaging quality for cardiac scans.
Another project to start in the spring will convert an old CT Lab into a new electrophysiology lab to provide additional space, and support cardiology and interventional radiology needs.