Establishment of an emergency CT service by means of teleradiology

The teleradiological connection between the University Hospital in Innsbruck, Tyrol, and the Regional Hospital in Zwettl, Lower Austria, is presented as an example of a routine online connection of two helical CT systems.

Objective: To establish a practicable and cost-efficient emergency CT service in a remote hospital during night time and on weekends.

Methods: Online connection of a GE HiSpeed Advantage-Spiral-CT and a GE Prospeed-Spiral-CT via two Sun SPARC 10 work stations and ISDN.

Results: The transmission of 121 CT data sets from 116 patients revealed a sufficiently fast average transmission time of 15 (6-53) minutes and average transmission costs of DM 9.00 per examination. The system was technically reliable, cost-efficient and practicable in clinical routine application.

Conclusions: Teleradiology enables remote hospitals to provide an emergency CT service even if there is no radiological specialist available outside office hours. Thus time-consuming and cost-intensive patient transfers and delay of therapy can be reduced.