Alphenix – the Perfect Combination of Flexibility, Workflow, and Image Quality:

The cardiac catheterization labs at Royal North Shore hospital in Sydney, Australia provide interventional cardiology services to both the Royal North Shore public and private hospitals. The labs perform coronary angiography, PCI, infarct angioplasty, electro-physiology studies and support the hospitals expanding structural heart program. The department has a 30-year relationship with Canon Medical and currently has two Alphenix interventional cardiology systems, one installed in 2019 and the second in early 2023.

“We’re a busy department and so it’s important that we have a system with great workflow and flexibility – to help us complete procedures faster”, states Nadeem Mughal, the senior radiographer in charge of the Cath Labs. “We also need to ensure that our interventional systems are easy to use and easy to train new cardiologists and radiographers.”

I like working with Canon interventional systems because they are easy to use, intuitive and can be configured to suit our department’s needs. The Alphenix’s hyper-handle system is a great addition to our departments workflow. I love how I can configure it to have all the functionality I need right at my fingertips. I can control the lights, the playback runs, map images, fluoro controls all with one hand. Easy, one-handed access to all the functionality I require means that there is always one hand available to support the patient. It is also important for our cardiologists, as it means they can always maintain control of their catheter. This is essential at critical parts of a procedure, for example when they are about to deploy a stent or have just crossed a lesion in a chronic total occlusion case.

The system’s tableside tablet is also fully configurable and provides access to all the system’s features at the tableside. It provides seamless workflow and gives greater control and flexibility.

One of the biggest advantages of the Alphenix and one of my personal favorites is the cine automatic replay function. With the type of interventional work we perform, particularly infarct angioplasty, it is critical to have quick and easy access to visualize your last run, pause it and go through frame-by-frame. Having your last run play and pause in real time, parallel to live fluoro is a feature we rely on, and it gives the team a much better understanding of the stenosis and the interventional progress. It also allows other consultants to review previous runs from within the control room without interrupting the live fluoro of the primary operator and give any advice if needed. It’s a first-class feature for a first-class machine, our cardiologists love it and wouldn’t live without it. One of the biggest advantages of the Alphenix is the automatic continuous instant replay function.It allows you to view fluoro and a live replay on your reference screen simultaneously – giving the team a much better understanding of the stenosis and intervention progress

I consider the Canon engineers a part of our Cath Lab team. They are professional, pro-active and I have been impressed that they will visit the department regularly. This pro-active approach means that potential problems can be identified early. On a recent visit, one of the Canon engineers noticed a humming from our system, he was able to immediately locate and order a new x-ray tube from a local warehouse and have it replaced that day, after hours. This meant that there was no impact to our service and our ability to provide care to our patients.

Royal North Shore Hospital have recently installed their second Alphenix Core+ cardiac interventional system and have been impressed with the support they have received from the entire Canon project team. Nadeem commented that both the hospitals Canon systems were installed in record time.