Upgrade helps identify hips at risk of failure

At Medway Maritime Hospital are Vertec product specialist Bill Reid, staff nurses Lesley Stewart and Jenny Barton with clinical nurse specialist Gwen Worcester.

A Hologic QDR4500 installed at Medway Maritime Hospital in 1996 has been upgraded to yield diagnostic information beyond BMD, with hip structural analysis (HSA) software that enables structural assessment of the upper femur based on information obtained from a DXA scan about bone geometry and distribution of bone mass in the region. This assessment of cross sectional mechanical parameters enables assessment of hip fracture risk beyond data provided from DXA alone.

Vertec product specialist Bill Reid said: “At Vertec we believe that there is often no need to replace our DXA systems when an upgrade does so much to keep them at the forefront of clinical applications.  This is particularly true at Medway Maritime where the 15-year old DXA system features in the cutting edge research activity led by Dr Ryan.”

See the full report on page 9 of the June 2012 issue of RAD Magazine.