FONAR Upright MRI Penetrates The U.S. Hospital Market
First Sale Completed to a Major Hospital Chain
FONAR Corporation, the inventor of MR Scanning, announced that its FONAR Upright MRI scanner is successfully penetrating the U.S. hospital market, as a sale to a member hospital of a major hospital chain(1) is concluded.
"This is the second sale to a hospital within a month for the FONAR Upright MRI," said Raymond V. Damadian, M.D., president and founder of FONAR. "We announced earlier this month the sale of the FONAR Upright MRI to the Wellmont Bristol Regional Medical Center Hospital in Bristol, Tennessee. In addition, a second major hospital chain is currently in active negotiations with FONAR for its first FONAR Upright MRI."
"FONAR's first U.S. based hospital installation occurred in November 2005. It was installed in Pikeville Hospital in Pikeville, Kentucky. Hospitals are recognizing that FONAR's new patented technology available with the FONAR Upright MRI is delivering an important medical benefit to their hospital patients that is not available from other MRI scanners. Other MRI scanners are recumbent-only and do not have access to our company's patented FONAR Upright MRI technology," said Dr. Damadian.
"Hospitals are becoming aware that FONAR's Upright MRI technology provides much more accurate diagnoses of spine problems than are possible with recumbent-only MRIs. This minimizes the risk of doing the wrong surgery because a wrong diagnosis is obtained. They are becoming aware that the patented FONAR Upright MRI imaging technology enables their hospital to achieve better results for their back surgery patients. This in turn permits the hospital to establish itself as a 'Center of Excellence in Spine Surgery' which will have the result of markedly increasing surgical referrals because of their distinction for achieving exceptional surgical outcomes. Hospital CEO's are very much aware of the much needed financial benefits that increased surgery referrals bring when superior surgical outcomes for the patient have been achieved.
"The spine is a weight-bearing organ," Dr. Damadian said, "whose principal function is to bear the body's weight so that the human body can maintain its erect posture. Consequently, the only truly relevant image evaluation of the spine, when a patient is experiencing back pain, is to evaluate it when it is performing its principal function, namely carrying weight.
"It seems to me far from optimal, if not irrelevant, to evaluate the spine in the weightless state, as recumbent-only MRIs do, when the spine's principal task is to 'carry weight'," continued Dr. Damadian. "Indeed, there is the very real prospect of doing the wrong surgery if the diagnosis is wrong. Moreover, the great majority of back pain symptoms experienced by patients, occur when they are erect and actively carrying a weight load. Only the FONAR Upright MRI is tailored to meet the need of examining the fully loaded spine.
"More specifically," Dr. Damadian said, "and very much in keeping with the preceding discussion of the need for diagnostic accuracy in the evaluation of spine disease, the Institute of Diagnostic Radiology, University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland published a report in the distinguished journal, Radiology, in 2000, that on the average the recumbent-only MRI scanner made the wrong diagnosis 24.35% of the time, when compared with MRIs obtained with the patient erect(2)."
"According to the recent reference book "The Failed Spine" (2005), one of the major identifiable causes of the Failed Back Surgery Syndrome (FBSS) is the 'failure to identify the structural source(s) of pain correctly' (p.124), i.e. the failure to achieve the correct diagnosis. Interestingly, the failed spine surgery rate, according to this reference (p. 123)(3) ranges from 10-40%. The average of this range is 25%. It is hard to look at the proximity of the average wrong diagnosis rate of 24.35%(2) and the average failed spine surgery rate of 25%," said Dr. Damadian, "and assign this proximity to coincidence. We are seeing images regularly from our installed FONAR Upright MRI machines (now more than 100) that show pathology with the patient erect that is not seen with the patient recumbent.
"Currently there are approximately 800,000 spine surgeries being performed annually in the United States. Thus, it seems to me," said Dr. Damadian, "that there is the very real prospect of substantially reducing the failed back surgery rate by taking MRI pictures of the fully weight-loaded spine with FONAR's new Upright MRI imaging technology before surgery. This will assure that the correct diagnosis has been achieved so that the correct surgery is performed."
(1) For competitive reasons within its community, the hospital does not wish to make its identity known before the scanner is installed and examining patients. FONAR will elaborate on the identity of the hospital chain and its significance within the U.S. hospital community in a subsequent press release.
(2) "the diagnoses changed . . . 26.3% (of the time) between the supine neutral position and seated flexion positions . . . (and) 22.4% of the time between the supine neutral and seated extension positions." (the average of which is 24.35%) (Weishaupt, et al., Radiology 2000; 215:247-253)
(3) Chapter 14 Imaging of the Failed Spine (pages 123-136) in "The Failed Spine", 2005, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (Eds. M. Szpalski and R. Gunzburg)
SOURCE: FONAR Corporation