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| Diagnostic Testing |
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The Matagorda County Hospital District offers a variety of state-of-the-art diagnostic services. From routine lab and x-ray services, to highly technical nuclear medicine or cardiac tests, the District provides a trained and friendly staff as well as the latest in equipment to assist your physician in diagnosing illness.
 Our Radiology Department offers Computerized Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which are helpful tests in diagnosing soft tissue problems (such as with cartilage and/or ligaments) and for more severe problems such as stroke, where the brain is scanned. These are painless imaging tests that perform similar studies; however, each modality has areas or conditions for which it is superior at detecting.
Other services offered in our Radiology Department include Mammography, Ultrasound, and Nuclear Medicine. Nuclear Medicine can sound very frightening, but it really is a low-risk way to view specific areas of soft tissue, such as your liver, heart, or kidneys. A radioisotope, which is specially calibrated for the area of the body in question, is injected (like a regular shot in the arm, not in the part of the body being studied). Once the injection has had time to travel through the body to the specific area, the patient lies on a table and the technologist takes computer pictures which show us tumors and other abnormalities.
Our Cardio-Pulmonary Department is able to perform a variety of studies that can help diagnose or rule out issues of the heart and lungs. Matagorda County is fortunate in having an experienced Pulmonologist on the Medical Staff. On order of a physician, the department can perform pulmonary function tests to determine if the patient's lungs are working correctly, and other appropriate tests. The community also now has its first full-time cardiologist, along with the visiting cardiologists who come from St. Luke's and Methodist. In support of these physician practices, the District offers Cardiac Caths to diagnose blockage in the heart, stress tests, echo-cardiograms, and doppler studies to diagnose most cardiac conditions.
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