An MRI compatible ventilator has made an immediate impact in its first year at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital’s (SCUH) Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
The medical device bought by Wishlist is a lifesaving and lifechanging addition for some of the region’s most vulnerable patients.
SCUH Director of Neonatology Dr Lizelle Weber said the MRI compatible ventilator allows more critically ill newborn babies to be treated close to home.
“This ventilator can be utilised for numerous things,” Dr Weber said, “but in the neonatal unit, we use it for ventilation of acutely unwell babies, and that happens about once a week.”
“The benefit of the Hamilton MRI compatible ventilator is more babies can stay locally, because it's expanded our ventilation fleet, and secondly, babies who would have previously travelled to Brisbane to have an MRI brain scan can now be managed locally.
“Other ventilators are not MRI safe.
“An MRI machine is a giant magnet, and it creates magnetic fields, and anything that's not safe in that environment physically gets sucked into the MRI and can harm the patient in the process, and it can also damage that multi-million dollar machine.
“You have to be very, very careful of what you take into an MRI scanner.”
Babies like 934-gram Lennon Sims, who was the face of this year’s 92.7 Mix FM Give Me 5 fundraiser is one of the patients who would have benefited from the MRI compatible ventilator if it had been available when he was born last December.
Instead, he had to be taken to Brisbane with all the risks that poses to a baby born three months early.
