Health & Fitness Wite Tom Ellison Sales and Design The Landscape Group HEART HEALTHY 2739 East Maple Milford, MI 48381 248.685.9211 www.landscapegroup.net what For over twenty years we have been one of the most creative design/build residential and commercial landscaping firms in Oakland County. Patient Protection Study: Radiation for heart test can be cut by more than half. Ilene Wolff Special to the Jewish News T Commercial and Residential Brick Pavers • Plantings • Stamped Concrete • Sod • Hydro Seed Lighting • Water Features • Irrigation • Garden Railroads The Landscape Group was established in 1985. For over twenty years we have been one of the most creative design/build residential and commercial landscaping firms in OaIrdand County. Consisting of over 30 plus employees, our design, sales and installation crews are unmatched when it comes to experience. Our design staff has 4 designers, each with at least 15 years experience as well as our install crews and project managers who are dedicated landscape professionals that are committed to excellence in the finished product The ability to provide one on one personal service for your landscape project including neces- sary sub-contractors is our strong suit By saving you the inconvenience of working with several companies, we are able to coordinate your job to provide you with a complete project from start to finish, by working with just one designer and project manager!. From new construction to reno- vations on your existing home, we can professionally install brick pavers, retaining walls, large tree tansplants, shrub plantings, irrigation. sod, hydroseed, water features, outdoor lighting, decks, pools. outdoor living areas including kitchens and fireplaces.The Landscape Group can handle it all! All of the plant material you'll find at our I I -acre nursery' is hand tagged, from all over the country.We welcome all of our customers to come and view the plant material that is going to be part of their landscape. Our exclusive warranty is one of the best in the industry. When you select The Landscape Group, you not only get great service and experience, you get piece of mind by knowing you have chosen a professional dedicated to your satisfac=tion. We are confident that our team of experienced professionals will be able to fulfill all of your landscape needs. Protect one of your largest investments by choosing a company dedicated to your 100% complete satisfaction. chooseThe Landscape Group. adeerthenield A32 July 16 • 2009 he radiation dose for a diagnostic scan of the heart and blood vessels was cut on average by more than half for almost 5,000 patients through a Michigan quality improvement project. There was no affect on image quality. Doctors and hospitals statewide have helped protect patients from the potential risks of radiation exposure as a result. Dr. Raff Details of the project — a quality improvement initiative funded by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan — are published in the June 10 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association. The project participants were able to reduce the radiation dose by an average of 53.3 percent, to about the equivalent of three years' "back- ground radiation." This refers to radiation one would get from such sources as sunlight and radioactiv- ity from the earth. They were able to reduce the heart CT radiation dose through the use of seven risk-reduction protocols, such as limiting the area scanned and by adjusting the power of the scanner depending on the patient's weight. "The public should be reassured that Blue Cross and the participating hospitals are monitoring radiation doses and looking for ways to reduce them," says cardiologist Gilbert L. Raff, M.D., medical director of the Ministrelli Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging at Beaumont Hospitals, Royal Oak, who leads the project."By doing this in a voluntary and collaborative way, we've been successful in improving health care overall, espe- cially for those with medical con- ditions requiring frequent CT imag- ing." Data for the radiation-reduc- tion project were - Dr. Gilbert L. Raff collected on 4,995 patients at hospitals in the Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging Consortium. The consortium was organized in 2006 with ongoing financial support from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) and Blue Care Network to provide administrative, logistical, statistical and analytical support for the qual- ity improvement work. "The coronary CT angiography initiative is one of our organization's Value Partnerships — a collec- "The public should be reassured that Blue Cross and the participating hospitals are monitoring radiation doses and looking for ways to reduce them." The project not only involved 15 hospitals working together in the first multi-center trial of its kind, it also included heart spe- cialists and radi- ologists working side by side. Known as heart CT angiography, or coronary com- puted tomography angiography, the procedure has a 90-percent success rate in diagnosing heart disease. It is especially use- ful in identifying whether low-risk patients with symptoms do, in fact, have heart disease. It uses contrast, or dye, in the arteries and high-resolution CT to get detailed images of blood vessels and the heart to identify possible blockages or structural problems. But the exposure of patients to ion- izing radiation during the test is a barrier to its widespread use.