Patient radiation dose safety has become the latest buzzword. With the emerging regulations and mandates, technologies and best practices, the radiation safety information pool has become convoluted with disparate and conflicting information. With numerous opinions and interpretations on radiation safety trends, best practices, regulation updates and studies, healthcare providers as well as the general public are experiencing difficulties filtering the true message in managing patient radiation dose away from the industry noise. Healthcare providers are constantly reviewing and assessing regulations, best imaging processes and the emerging technologies (automated dose management systems and dose management CT devices) promising to decrease or eliminate the chance of another sentinel event.

Researchers at Wayne State University have made a fundamental discovery and, in subsequent collaboration with scientists at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LIAI), are one step closer to the goal of developing the world’s first T-cell peptide-based vaccine for heart disease — the number one killer in the nation.

In a community hospital and emergency medical services (EMS) system, the standard 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) is the primary and initial objective diagnostic tool used by emergency medical technicians (EMT) and emergency department (ED) physicians in diagnosing an ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and activating the cardiac catheterization laboratory (cath lab) for emergent coronary angiography and primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).