MercyOne unveils new diagnostics tool, helps with less invasive procedures

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — MercyOne Siouxland Medical Center has a brand new machine to help detect cancer and heart problems.

This new machine is an interventional radiology suite that allows surgeons to use less radiation while taking better, more accurate pictures and allows for better mapping of vessels and 3D reconstructions of the images.

This machine replaces an old one that was purchased back in 2012.

"In this room, we had interventional radiology services but that was a machine was probably from 2012 and didn't have the latest advancements," said Tim Daugherty, Vice President of Operations and Strategy at MercyOne. "We invested $3 million and did a complete overhaul head to toe."

The new machine allows the procedure to be done on outpatients with people recovering much faster.

Dr. Neal Khurana is the doctor that operates the machine. He says his vision is to use the machine to help people in a way that they hadn't been able to be helped before.

"We are basically doing procedures that avoid surgery," Dr. Khurana. "Where we can treat benign conditions to more advanced things like blood clots and open up closed vessels, we can treat tumors and again all this with reducing the side effects of traditional therapy."

Dr. Khurana has been at MercyOne since October, after arriving from a practice in Chicago.