A KEY hospital scanner will be replaced after a senior director warned that the unreliability of the ageing machine was reducing some patients’ survival rates.

Paul Brennan said the “increasingly unreliable” CT scanner at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital was leading to cancelled appointments and patient backlogs.

It is used at all hours to diagnose conditions, including people with a planned overnight stay and those who attend A&E.

The 13-year-old scanner and another machine are used for 75 per cent of all CT scans at the hospital – 21,500 a year and set to rise to 36,500 by 2020.

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It will be replaced by a £1.9m machine, which Mr Brennan said would be more reliable, provide higher quality images and give off less radiation.

The scans – which take between five and 10 minutes – involve X-ray and are used for cases such as ruptured heart aorta vessels and for diagnosing cancers.

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust board members agreed the proposal by Mr Brennan, its director of clinical services, last Wednesday.

The existing, old machine “will become increasingly unreliable leading to inpatient bed pressures, multiple patient cancellations” and missed waiting targets, the board heard.

In the past year the scanner had not been used for 16 days because of unplanned repairs.

Mr Brennan estimated 500 appointments were cancelled or re-scheduled as a result, and radiology leaders recommended scanners were changed after seven years.

He said there had been occasions when both the scanners that serve the emergency department had broken down at the same time, meaning patients were sent to neuroradiology.

This led to delays, “potentially reducing survival rates in critically ill patients”, according to Mr Brennan.

He also warned that failing to replace the scanner could also increase waiting times in A&E at the hospital. Last week the Oxford Mail reported that the trust recorded its worst quarterly A&E waiting times since it was formed in 2011.

From October to December, 86.1 per cent of patients were discharged, admitted or transferred within four hours of arrival. The target is 95 per cent. Mr Brennan said a backlog of 30 patients a day would develop if the scanner was not replaced, which would delay diagnosis and management of their condition.

Better image quality would be used for study aspects such as fine blood vessels in the heart, he said, and modern scanners gave off up to 50 per cent less radiation.

Mr Brennan said he was “delighted” with the trust’s decision to replace the scanner and added the new machine “will offer significant benefits to patients including better image quality and reduced radiation dosages”.

He said: “It will also provide faster image reconstruction that will enable more rapid reviews by clinical teams.”

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