Vitucci uses his NewTom at his referral facility, Animal Imaging Center, which serves a number of local practices as well as his general practice, County Animal Hospital. Though County Animal Hospital was originally founded 50 years ago, Vitucci said being progressive when it comes to technology has always been a goal of his. There’s a perception that veterinary hospitals in the Midwest aren’t as advanced as in other areas of the country, and Vitucci wanted to change that in the St. Louis area. He started to see results almost immediately.
“Anytime you start a new modality, there’s a learning curve,” Vitucci said.
“But as soon as I got used to the images, I could tell this was much better than our traditional dental X-rays.”
Introducing the new modality to incoming veterinarians is important to Vitucci, too. He offers an orthopedic surgical rotation for veterinary students though the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine. Vitucci uses the NewTom as a tool to teach the students about both orthopedic treatment and imaging’s role in the veterinary practice.
Vitucci also educates veterinarians who are already practicing on how they can integrate cone beam CT.
INTEGRATING THE NEWTOM
Vitucci’s passion for the NewTom continued to grow as he got more familiar with the machine and its capabilities. Today, he helps train veterinary teams on using it. The images and data sets that the NewTom produces allow practices to do different procedures, diagnostics and therapies, and Vitucci helps those new to the machine identify those situations.
“Make sure you are using it for the things that you can treat,” Vitucci said. “That is where practitioners can help their clients the most, by improving the quality and standard of care without having to refer as much out. Look for chronic external and middle ear disease, nasal disease, elbow disease, lumbosacral disease – for the simple things that you can act on afterward, the diagnosis is amazing.”
Vitucci said every dental case he performs gets scanned with the cone beam. Other cases he looks out for include chronic ear disease and nasal disease; dogs that aren’t responding to treatment in suspected cases of intervertebral disk disease; cases of insidious orthopedic disease and more. None of them are overly invasive or time consuming because of the speed of the NewTom’s scan. “You could have three scans done by the time it takes you to flip a dog over,” Vitucci said, noting that the speed makes diagnosis much simpler, especially in dental cases.
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“Recognizing what cases work best is absolutely paramount,” Vitucci said. “The fear is that if you get a bad report and look bad in front of the owner, the machine isn’t going to do you any good. That doesn’t happen with the NewTom, especially when you’re choosing your cases right. When you show the owners the CT, they’re amazed and proud that their vet hospital has it.”
Seeing results is important in the Show Me State, and that’s exactly what has happened for Vitucci and Animal Imaging Center.
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