The Chahids Mahmoudi Hospital in Algeria wants to be the country’s leading private cancer treatment center. To achieve this, they have great doctors, nurses and technicians, but they also need great technology. That’s why they’ve selected GE’s PET Discovery scanner, which will provide the team with faster, more accurate diagnosis.
The significance of this new technology and its role in supporting the government’s national plan to combat cancer was reflected when Algeria’s Minister of Health, Population and Hospital Reform, Abdelmalek Boudiaf, attended the PET scanner’s installation ceremony.
The machine is the first GE PET scanner in the country. The hospital also installed the country’s first GE PETtrace 840 Cyclotron.
Located in the province of Tizi Ouzou, Chahids Mahmoudi Hospital is equipped with a complete technology platform dedicated to the detection and treatment of cancer.
The Discovery PET scanner provides the hospital’s doctors with both metabolic and anatomical information, thereby helping provide an accurate indication, not only of the location of disease, but its progress as well. It also delivers superior image quality.
These results save time, which can be valuable in the treatment of some cancers and help better define the therapeutic strategy. The equipment allows doctors to visualize and measure the metabolic or molecular activity of an organ in three dimensions. The PET technology works by picking up the emissions made by positrons, which are produced by the PETtrace 840 Cyclotron and help comprise the “contrast agent” injected into the patient.
“These technologies are essential to detecting pathologies that result in an alteration of normal physiology, such as cancers. They follow their evolution and can help assess the response to treatment, said Dr. Said Mahmoudi, owner of Chahid Mahmoudi Hospital. “Thanks to the PET Scan and Cyclotron, we can make precise cancer diagnosis, spare patients a more expensive trip abroad and support the national plan to fight against cancer launched by the government”, said Dr. Said Mahmoudi.
This ceremony comes only a month after GE Healthcare’s Discovery IGS 730 angiography system was installed at the Frantz Fanon University Health Center in Blida. The Health Center’s cardiologists obtain high-quality coronary and arteriography images from the device for use in planning, guiding and assessing not only routine procedures, but also complex endovascular, cardiac and hybrid procedures.
Earlier this year the GE Healthcare IT (GE HCIT) software solution were launched in Algeria . According GE analysis, they have the potential to increase doctors’ diagnosis confidence and accuracy by up to 10%; they reduce storage costs and improve image archiving by up to 20%, and they save up to 19% of radiologists’ time.
GE has been present in Algeria for 40 years . Its advanced technologies play a key role in supporting Algeria’s development aspirations in the fields of health, energy, oil & gas, aviation and transport. As a strategic partner in the country’s economic growth, GE employs more than 700 Algerians.