YGIA Polyclinic’s Radiology Department has been operating for 27 years and its staff is actively involved in ongoing clinical research and training to ensure the best possible services to all patients. A year ago, it embarked on setting up a breast imaging unit equipped with state-of-the-art technology, culminating in the installation of the Hologic Selenia Dimensions DBT system.  
Dr. Annie Papoutsou, Head of the X-ray Department gives us the full picture.

How has your hospital expanded in recent years?
In 2007, after major renovations and an extension of its building facilities, the YGIA Polyclinic private hospital boosted its capacity to 152 beds, extended the number of operating theatres to 12, established and extended the capabilities of its Clinical Laboratory Department, Radiology Department (X-ray, Mammog, Fluoroscopy, MRI, CT, Ultrasound), produced a multi-dynamic Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Pediatrics Departments. Furthermore, from mid June 2012, a state-of-the-art Cardio-Vascular Catheterizations Centre was established at the hospital offering the only 24-hour acute percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) service in Cyprus. Moreover, the hospital has a range of fully equipped ambulances working 24 hours in order to be able to best respond to emergencies.

What type of equipment is used by your department?
Most of our X-ray rooms use the latest DR digital detectors providing superior quality images almost instantly, and are linked to an enterprise-wide fully integrated RiS/PACS.
Last year we organized a breast imaging unit, equipped with the latest technology, FFDM Hologic Selenia Dimensions, a GE ultrasound  with strain and shearwave elastography and a Hitachi ultrasound with high frequency  linear probe.
In our department we performed  more than 90,000 exams yearly.
What was the rationale for selecting the Hologic Selenia Dimensions system?
The decision was based on the special features offered by the Selenia Dimensions; these include:

• 2D imaging or combo mode (2D+3D) imaging in the same  compression.
• Exceptionally sharp  images with minimal dose.
• Streamlined workflow.
• Ergonomic design for comfort and  ease of operation.
• We believe that it offers the best technology available.

What are the advantages of Digital Breast Tomosynthesis?
The use of Digital Breast Tomosynthesis in breast screening enables us to find more invasive cancers than conventional 2D mammography alone.
The masses, distortions and asymmetric densities are better visualized with the Selenia Dimension.
But also it can reduce the costs associated with unnecessary recalls and it can reduce the incidence of negative biopsies.

Has the number of exams been affected by the adoption of DBT?      
Since the installation the number of mammography exams has increased up to 50%.
The recalls rate has decreased and also additional views have decreased.

When did you decide to acquire the C-View software and what are the benefits?
C-View software was installed from the first  day of the equipment installation, giving us the possibility of eliminating the need for conventional 2D exams after 6 months. The combined tomosynthesis and C-View exam makes lower patient radiation dose possible. Tomosynthesis exams with C-View software offer a patient dose similar to a 2D  only exam with  superior clinical performance for all breast types.

You are also using the Affirm biopsy device –what is the typical biopsy procedure followed in your department?
Up until now we are using the Affirm stereotactic biopsy device and in the next few days we are going to install the Affirm stereotactic tomosynthesis biopsy device to target lesions seen only with tomosynthesis. The typical biopsy procedures followed in our department are the biopsy under  the stereotactic  guidance and hookwire localization for subtle masses clusters of microcalcifications and architecture distortion.

What  do you see as the next step for improving the performance of your department?
Installing I-view with the contrast media.
I-View is a contrast-enhanced mammography technique that may be a viable alternative to breast MRI in performing contrast agent breast imaging. It offers certain advantages over MRI, including reduced cost and shorter procedure times. The imaging combination of contrast enhanced 2D imaging (CE2D) along with a 3D tomo scan, gives additional information beyond a CE2D examination alone, and may allow localization and morphologic evaluation of an enhancing lesion, further increasing the value of the CE2D procedure.

It is now clear that casualties after the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris were reduced by a superbly conceived and coordinated response.
While 130 people died in the tragedy, another number deserves attention, too. As many as 302 people were wounded, several seriously. They were triaged, treated on site and then shifted to hospital. Of these, two died during transport and another two in the first 10 days after admission. In other words, the casualty rate in the aftermath of terror was less than 1.5%.

by Ashutosh Sheshabalaya and Antonio Bras Monteiro

Plan Blanc – a collaborative blueprint for disaster medicine
Much of the credit for such an achievement goes to France’s ‘Plan Blanc’ (White Plan), created to respond to disasters. In Paris, the White Plan was activated within an hour after the first incident, namely the bomb explosions at the Stade de France. It mobilized some 40 hospitals, 200 operating rooms, 22,000 beds and 100,000 health professionals.
The White Plan is essentially a collaborative blueprint for disaster medicine. Although its conceptual roots go back several decades, November 2015 was the first time it was put to use.
The White Plan effectively places the entire French hospital system on a war footing, with the ability to pool resources on demand. It establishes a lean/quick-response command, control, communication and information system, mobilizing and synchronizing hospital/clinic bed and staff availability to anticipated victim inflows, postponing chronic surgeries and interventions while readying operating rooms, and providing rolling plans for augmenting resources – both human and material. The White Plan also establishes a specialized unit for informing families and communicating with the media.

No surprise about French leadership
According to us, France is among the world’s best prepared countries to deal medically with the aftermath of a terrorist attack. This laurel should be no surprise, given that the concept of ‘disaster medicine’ (médecine de catastrophe) was developed in the 1980s by three French physicians – René Noto, Alain Larcan and Pierre Huguenard. The French Society of Disaster Medicine/Société Française de Médecine de Catastrophe (SFMC) was founded in 1983.

Emergency medicine versus disaster medicine
Both emergency medicine and disaster medicine deal with the kind of challenges seen in Paris: gunshot wounds, blast wounds caused by explosions with organ and tissue damage, contusion and embolisms, multiple penetrations, pulmonary damage, and last but not least, shock.
The key difference between the two, however, involves the subject for medical attention. In emergency medicine, the subject is an individual patient, while disaster medicine deals with a group of patients. Disaster medicine begins on site and, given extreme constraints in human resources and equipment, is devoid of any element of personal medical care. It also uses specialized equipment, such as portable ultrasound and minimalist lightweight stretchers, while first responders are trained to improvise – for instance, carrying patients by their arms and legs. All this was evident in Paris.

Specialized military medical practices
What also was seen in Paris was a full range of specialized techniques. Some of these are derived direct from military medicine – hemorrhage control with tourniquets, hypotensive resuscitation and hypothermia prevention.
Another battlefield practice deployed in Paris (and debated subsequently by clinicians in many other countries) was to let the blood pressure of thoracic primary blast injury victims fall to levels which avoided exsanguination, but not below that required to maintain perfusion.

Anticipating frictions
Although considerable attention was paid to the White Plan, other Plans too rolled into place in the immediate aftermath of the first attack in Paris. Taken together, they highlight how potential conflicts on roles and responsibilities, jurisdiction etc. between different sets of professionals, in a period of extreme personal and systemic stress, had been anticipated, with interdisciplinary protocols already in place to minimize confusion between the police, the fire brigade, ambulance drivers, physicians and other hospital staff as well as the media and the public.
The police, for example, provided perimetric security and crowd control, taking charge of  clearing and organizing pathways to and from incident scenes. The fire brigade was responsible for victim search and extraction as well as certain types of emergency first aid. Though based in principle at field stations, doctors and nurses attended on site as and when required to the severely wounded, conducting triage and handing over patients for transport to ambulance drivers. On their part, specialist Red Cross teams had set up counselling services for victims and their families by midnight – in other words, within just 2-3 hours of the attacks.
The impact of such preparation cannot be under-estimated. In many cases, it allowed BRI special police forces to ignore pleas for help from victims, without disrupting their conscience or composure. Knowing that qualified medical professionals would shortly be taking responsibility for the wounded, the armed intervention teams instead concentrated on their job – to neutralize the terrorists.
All this, it must be underlined, was undertaken in the face of anticipated dislocations due to a strike by thousands of medical professionals protesting a health reform bill in the French Parliament on the very same day as the terrorist attacks. The strike was subsequently called off.

Other plans also implemented
The Alpha Red Plan is designed to deal with extreme emergencies at multiple sites. It sets up an ad-hoc, quick-operational chain of command which pools the full range of emergency services. These include public and private ambulances, the fire brigade and civil protection as well as the Red Cross – to provide evacuation and support. Hospitals outside the region are also placed on standby, if required.
In an interview with the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’, France’s Director-General for Health, Benoit Vallet, said that he had activated emergency protocols in areas outside Paris, including a request for helicopters to be on standby to transport victims. Vallet also noted that military hospitals treated some of the victims: “[Their] surgeons’ experience in war surgery was, unfortunately, exactly what was needed.”
The Red Plan focuses on pre-hospital care in the field. It is based on the principle of extracting and grouping the injured in a field medical facility, triaging them and then providing care on a need basis. Care is based on prioritizing treatment to what is strictly necessary for survival, managing extreme pain and transporting victims without worsening their condition.
Indeed, a key factor behind the success of the Paris response in November was the pre-hospital system. Within an hour of activation of the Red Plan, eight coordinating units dispatched 45 medical teams – each consisting of a doctor, a paramedical assistant and a driver – to six incident sites.

Lessons from France: the US case
The lessons from the French response to terror are being studied in many parts of the world. One of the first questions being asked is whether other countries would have managed as well.

Such a topic seems to be particularly charged in the US, for several reasons.
A key hurdle is that it is not easy to compare the US and French disaster response systems. The US system is built around mainly private hospitals, and is bottom-up and decentralized, while the French system is based largely on public sector hospitals, and is top-down and centralized.
Nevertheless, critics of hospital disaster preparedness in the US complain that decentralization simply means far too many federal initiatives, which leaves considerable scope for confusion about  lines of authority and responsibility in a crisis.

The US National Disaster Medical System
The point organization for overseeing a US federal medical response to disaster is the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS). NDMS is staffed by more than 8,000 civilian volunteer medical personnel. It is tasked with supplementing medical professionals and equipment should local medical resources become overwhelmed. It also has the responsibility to move injured patients to areas unaffected by a disaster.
NDMS was originally under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) but was moved as a result of the 9-11 terror attacks to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, amidst allegations of mismanagement, NDMS was removed from FEMA and sent back to HHS, where it now remains parked within the Office of Preparedness and Emergency Operations (OPEO). OPEO is responsible for developing operational plans, analysis and training to respond to public health emergencies and acts of terror.

HHS versus Homeland Security: Turf wars and more
It is evident that there is room for considerable conflict between OPEO and NDMS’s original parent, FEMA. One of the supra-entities tasked with overseeing a disaster response is The National Response Framework, a multi-agency initiative run by FEMA for the Department of Homeland Security.
As Beltway insiders know, the rivalry between Homeland Security and HSS is considerable.

In 2005, a then-confidential report prepared for the Secretary of Homeland Security evaluated US disaster medical readiness. The 103-page report found that “the nation’s medical leadership works in isolation, its medical response capability is fragmented and ill-prepared to deal with a mass casualty event and … HHS lacks an adequate medical support capability for its field operating units.”

NDMS was specifically targeted, as lacking the medical leadership and oversight “to effectively develop, prepare for, employ, and sustain deployable medical assets,” relying on an overtaxed volunteer network and experiencing “critical shortfalls in doctrine, training, logistics support and coordination” with other emergency responders and federal agencies.

ER capacity shortfalls in the US ‘truly alarming’
The impact of such inter-departmental rivalry and the seriousness of the allegations drew the attention of a Congressional Committee a few years later. The Committee chose a very specific target, namely emergency room (ER) capacity in cities considered to be at greatest risk of a terror attack.
Its findings, released in May 2008, were described as “truly alarming”. The hospitals surveyed did not have “sufficient ER capacity to treat a sudden influx of victims from a terrorist bombing.” The situation in Washington DC and Los Angeles were described as being “particularly dire.”
Aside from capacity, the Congressional investigation also revealed what appeared to be “a complete breakdown in communications between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.” When the Committee requested information on hospital emergency surge capacity, “neither department was able to produce a single document.”

In France, some ironies too
There are several lessons to be learned from the French response to the November 13 terror attacks. The most salutary one brims with irony.
The French ‘system’, in the Anglo-Saxon mind, is believed to be statist, bureaucratic, top-heavy and inflexible. The White Plan response in November was based largely on the Parisian APHP, Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris, Europe’s largest hospital system.
Many critics have questioned the concept of the APHP, particularly its enormous size, as “an obstacle to adaptation in a rapidly changing technological, medical, and social context.” However, the rapid response of the APHP after the Paris terror attacks negates such criticism.
According to APHP Director General Martin Hirsch: “We sensed … that the size of the [APHP] could be an advantage in times of disaster. This advantage has now been demonstrated. No lack of coordination has been identified. No leakage or delay has occurred. No limit was reached.”
“At no time during the emergency was there a shortage of personnel.”

The authors
Ashutosh Sheshabalaya and Antonio Bras Monteiro
SolvX Solutions
Email: office@solvx.com

SolvX provides security and risk consulting services out of offices in Europe, the Middle East and Asia

We are all aware that there is a dearth of physicians both in primary healthcare and several hospital specialities in the West, an escalating problem that is particularly acute in the case of anesthesiologists. In some European countries this situation is at least partially the result of poor planning and under-investment in medical education, coupled with aggressive attempts to recruit medical professionals overseas, but there are other factors involved that must be addressed before we can hope to consider approaches that could alleviate the problem.
A major contributing factor is that today’s anesthesiologists are not only active in the operating theatre: their expertise is required during patient evaluation prior to surgery, and in critical care and pain management post-surgery. And not only has medical research augmented the number of surgical procedures that are now possible, but Europe’s increasing numbers of senior citizens, who are the most likely to suffer from non-communicable and chronic diseases, are the main beneficiaries of these innovative approaches. Inevitably this results in the demand for anesthesiologists exceeding the supply.
Another factor is that the generation of predominantly male anesthesiologists who focussed on their careers and were prepared to work in the evenings, at night and during weekends and holidays, severely limiting the time they could spend with their families, are retiring and being replaced by younger specialists who are legally entitled to work fewer hours per week and are also aware that social changes in recent decades, allowing both genders to enjoy satisfactory careers, require them to contribute practically (as well as financially) at home.
There is also a shortage of surgeons in Europe but this problem is not so acute as with anesthesiologists. Sadly this may well be because of the greater prestige enjoyed by practitioners of the former specialization, a situation which should surely be an anachronism. It is to be hoped that the primary goal of all medical professionals is to help their patients but until all specialisms are equally valued and respected for their essential contribution to patient care, some will continue to attract fewer recruits than others. There could even be a long-term solution to the problem if physicians themselves, including anesthesiologists, would value and respect non-medical healthcare professionals as they deserve. Surely the ever evolving technologies available in critical care settings and the relevant training offered could allow specialized anesthesia nurses to be trusted to administer anesthesia for certain procedures and patients, as well as sedation and pain relief, without requiring direct supervision from on high?