September 22nd was a unique day for me in MRI. I had the rare opportunity to do a scoliosis examination which isn't done often at that office. CDI's protocol for Scoliosis is:
Cervical Spine - T2 Sagittal and T1 Sagittal Flair
Thoracic Spine - T2 Sagittal, T1 Sagittal Flair and T2 Coronal
Lumbar Spine - T2 Sagittal, T1 Sagittal Flair and T2 Axial Gradient
The patient was a young 15 year old female who was in a great deal of pain and having difficult time with her breathing so we had to do quite a few repeats. One of the reasons why the doctor wanted to do a scan of the entire spine was to see why the patient was having so much trouble with her breathing.
We would check with her after each scan so that she would be able to cough, clear her throat or take in a deep breathe, and in between the different spinal scans, we would have to pull the patient out of the MRI so that she could sit up for a moment to relieve some of her pain.
The severity of the patients scoliosis was pretty substantial in the thoracic region so trying to count each vertebra to make sure that we had everything scanned in that area was challenging. On the Thoracic scans, you almost had to run through all of the slices in the sagittal view to count through T1 to T12. The entire exam was pretty rough on the patient but she got through the whole procedure. Overall, it was a great experience to see not just one spinal exam but to see all of the spine done in one procedure.
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