The Lysholm Department of Neuroradiology is a multi-disciplinary team of around 50 healthcare professionals providing leading-edge neuroradiological services and performing around 30,000 examinations and procedures a year. These include CT and MRI scanning; diagnostic and interventional neuroangiography; carotid and transcranial Doppler ultrasound; and general X-ray and theatre work.
All clinical imaging is reported in-house by a team of specialist Neuroradiologists led by 10 consultants. The department introduced PACS (picture archive and communication system) in 2004 allowing the hospital to become totally filmless.
2008 saw the department move into new, purpose built facilities housing a 128 slice CT scanner, a new bi-plane angiography suite, two 1.5T MRI scanners, a 3T MRI scanner and an interventional MRI suite. The interventional MRI suite is a unique installation providing operating theatre, angiography and MRI capabilities in a single room. The department’s facilities were augmented in 2010 , with new ultrasound equipment and a new digital plain film X-ray equipment and then in 2011 by a new clinical 3T MRI scanner.
The department has close academic links with UCL and the ION in which many staff hold honorary appointments through the Division of Neuroradiology and Neurophysics, led by the clinical head of department, Professor Tarek Yousry. The Neuroradiological Academic Unit undertakes research aiming to translate emerging advanced neuroimaging methods into clinical practice, to apply these for research in a wide range of specialties such as neuromuscular disease, dementia, stroke, prion disease, neurosurgery and movement disorders, and to develop novel imaging methods, particularly in the area of MRI.
The department is both a diagnostic and therapeutic service. The interventional neuroradiologists treat conditons endovascularly such as cerebral aneurysms, arterio-venous malformations and fistulae.
Nerve root injections are undertaken together with vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty for vertebral pathologies.
Approximately 30,000 examinations are performed each year.
We are continully striving to drive down waiting times. The current waiting list for routine diagnostic tests is as follows:
- MR: 5 weeks
- CT: 1 week
- Doppler ultrasound: 2 weeks
- Plain X-rays: no waiting list