by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | September 07, 2016
From the September 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Varian engineers have examined the tubes’ bearings and some of the inner parts to see how life can be extended, though the high demand from increased usage of CT scanners means that the number of scans done by an X-ray tube is increasing. “At the same time, there’s a lot that goes on,” Verhoef says. “Heat is the big enemy of a CT tube. The life of a tube depends on how you manage the heat and dissipate the heat. I think we have made a lot of progress in that because tubes are lasting longer than they used to.”
Like Varian, Dunlee is also continuously looking for ways to improve tube life. “We understand what unexpected downtime at an emergency room CT can mean,” Funk says. “With each process or material improvement we make, we see improvements in longevity and durability. Couple this with system dose reduction software and tubes will continue to last longer, technically, than they traditionally had in the past.”
However, Funk acknowledges that X-ray tubes are tested by increased demand on equipment, a trend also reported by the company’s competitors. “This technical trend may be compensated for by the trend to increase patient load per system,” Funk says. “The overall net effect on longevity is hard to predict and depends [on] how you measure — in time, or patient load. At Dunlee, we believe that the economic costs and lifetime are the better way to measure. Different usage requirements can be addressed with different solutions ranging from certified pre-owned tubes for more back-up systems, to attractive proactive replacement programs for high-intensity-use systems. This minimizes the chance of downtime and shares the risk with Dunlee.”
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