Siemens Healthineers will unveil its new SOMATOM go.Top Cardiovascular Edition CT scanner at the annual American College of Cardiology Scientific Session this weekend in New Orleans.

Cardiac CT is typically reserved for the inpatient setting because the systems are expensive and require bulky chillers. However, this system leverages a new tablet-based approach that may attract outpatient practices.

“It’s easy to learn and operate, and has very flexible total cost of ownership in terms of not having a burdensome service contract structure,” Mark Palacio, CT product manager at Siemens, told HCB News. “So it's designed to be more effective on all fronts – clinically, financially and operationally.”
The most common reason people visit the hospital in general is for chest pain, which can be caused by anything from pulmonary embolism to suspected myocardial infarction.

“With such a diverse array of clinical pathways that you could take for a patient, you need a robust tool, and that's where we see diagnostic CT playing a role,” said Palacio.

He added that there has been growing adoption of software-based methods that assess CT data and generate a map of the patient’s coronary artery. Because of this, there is less of a need for invasive coronary angiography procedures for patients at intermediate risk of cardiovascular problems.

Siemens provided its customers with this option when it partnered with HeartFlow two years ago to pair its CT scanners with the company’s FFRct Analysis software. It corroborates the results from the CT study with additional diagnostic information to determine whether the patient should be moved to a more invasive form of intervention.

“Right now in the market, our customers are looking for solutions where we can bring these imaging services into an outpatient cardiology practice, where the focus can be more patient-centric and more time can be spent on these patients and on imaging them well,” said Palacio.

Since the go.Top CT is operated by a tablet, all of the computers are built into the system and there is no need for a conventional control room. The technician is not tethered to a workstation console, so they can spend more time setting up the procedure and explaining the procedure to the patient.

The SOMATOM go.Top Cardiovascular Edition will be the fifth addition to Siemens’ SOMATOM go. CT platform. The portfolio includes the SOMATOM go.Now, SOMATOM go.Up, SOMATOM go.All and SOMATOM go.Top.

This is the first system on the platform that is specifically geared toward the cardiovascular outpatient setting.

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