Search Results for 'MRI'

Two new consultants have joined the team at Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe. Dr Niall Gough is a consultant radiologist while Mr Brendan Harding is a general surgeon with a special interest in gastrointestinal surgery.

Thousands of patients across Carlow and Kilkenny have now benefited from speedier treatment through the work of the National Treatment purchase fund (NTPF).

John (not his real name) accidentally discovered he had haemochromatosis after having a melanoma removed at University Hospital Galway.

TWO OF the three characters whose stories are told in Judith Thompson’s powerful Iraq War drama Palace Of The End will already be familiar to Western audiences.

Brian “Skeach” Kelly will more than likely line out for his beloved Palatine as they try to dethrone reigning champions, Éire Óg, in next Sunday’s county senior football final. Nothing unusual in that you might think. Sure hasn’t he been playing senior football for Pal for the best part of a decade and a half. Well three months ago, Skeagh was in no position to take to any football field. In actual fact his very life was under threat! Following a clash of heads in the Palatine’s clash with Kildavin/Clonegal he was left with quite a bruise on the side of his head. He went to hospital immediately after the game as a precaution but was discharged that evening and told to take it easy for a few days. That he did and was ready and willing to return to the training field. However he was still complaining of headaches and blurred vision. He thought nothing of it but the Pal management team were not happy to let him return. That first night back he was practising a few frees before training when Mick Lillis Pal’s trainer told him he was unhappy to let him resume. The club arranged an MRI scan in Dublin to make sure everything was alright and it was from there that things began to get interesting! He returned home but almost immediately was summoned back to Beaumont hospital where he was informed that he had a life-threatening clot on his brain. As he said himself, he still didn’t realise how serious the situation was. He felt fine. It was only when he asked a member of the medical team attending him to rate the severity of his condition on a scale of one to ten that it really became clear to him. She told him it was at least nine and a half! At that moment all thoughts of playing in this year’s county final disappeared from his mind! The doctors told him that if he had taken part in that training session and received even minimal physical contact, it could have been enough to have killed him. If the clot had moved as much as one milimetre it would have been fatal. He was immediately put on clot busting drugs in the hope of avoiding surgery and thankfully these were successful. Still he was not to go near a football field for at least the rest of the year, if not for ever. But once he was on the road to recovery like any GAA player, the lure of the game was too much. He was back for the latter part of the championship and apart from the unusual sight of him sporting a rugby scrum cap, everything is back to normal and he will be looking for his second county medal on Sunday. That possibility was far from his thoughts three months ago when, as he put it, “they were thinking of opening my skull!” Brian’s story may be an aside but it is just one of those things that add to the occasion of any county final. Every club has its own stories. Reasons why they just cannot afford to let this opportunity slip. I’m sure Éire Óg have their own. As I said here last week, it’s one of the things that makes a county final unique. 

Discussions are taking place between hospital unions nationally about extending the working hours of University Hospital Galway’s MRI scanner.

A programme which aims to breed cod in a bid to offset the depletion of wild whitefish stocks reached a major milestone this week with the transfer of the first batch of juvenile fish to the sea off Connemara.

Some 950 children from 24 primary schools in the city and county will bring their ailing or wounded bears to a special teddybear hospital being run by medical students at NUI Galway on Thursday and Friday January 29 and 30.

A new MRI scanner which allows faster imaging and is spacious, therefore easily accommodating bigger built patients or people who tend to be claustrophic, is now available at Merlin Park Imaging Centre.

Athlone-based drug developer and its US partner, Biogen Idec, last evening hailed success from a study into the effects of their MS drug, Tysabri in repairing damage to the myelin sheath, a key cause of MS.