Whether you've made your pick or are still shopping for the best cath/angio system, to keep it running at maximum uptime, you'll need to get yourself a service agreement. But how much should you expect to pay for that agreement? We want to help you budget for service with some average pricing numbers you’re likely to find as you shop around (see the table at the end). Before we share those numbers though, we want to explain some of the factors that will affect the price your service provider quotes you. The more you know about these details, the more accurate your expectations and your budget will be.

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If you're working with a Philips cath/angio lab like the Allura FD10 or FD20, you’re using an MRC 200 X-ray tube. And just like any X-ray tube, the MRC 200 will need to be replaced occasionally. When that time comes for you (and it's likely to come a few times over the course of your lab's life), you’ll find several product descriptions for the type of MRC 200 tubes in circulation. These descriptions include digits and initials that might not make any sense to you at first. Today, we're breaking these descriptions down so you can make your next major component purchase fully-informed.

In the cath lab world there are many peripheral items that can be used during catheterization to adapt a lab to the needs of hundreds of procedures. Today we’re going to focus on just one peripheral type, ultrasound devices; specifically IVUS and ICE. These devices have similar but distinct applications that can sometimes be easy to confuse. We'll clarify what each is and how it's used in conjunction with a cath lab below.

The interventional lab in most hospitals is a critical room that needs to perform like a workhorse for cardiac catheterization, electrophysiology, embolizations, ablations, and a slew of other procedure types. Downtime on a cath lab results in rescheduling patients at best and, if a lab fails during a procedure, it’s all hands on deck to care for the patient while working to get the equipment up and running again!

In these crucial and complex systems, one of the most important components is the X-ray tube. As a core component of the imaging chain the tube carries a heavy work load, generating X-rays and managing heat. As you weigh out the risks and rewards of supporting your own service in-house vs. placing it under a service contract, the following guide is designed to help you plan for the eventual failure of your lab's X-ray tube.

One question we're asked on a regular basis about interventional radiology equipment is, "What's the difference between a cath lab and an electrophysiology (EP) lab?" It’s a great question and, from a cursory look at the cath lab system being used, you wouldn’t notice a difference. Both cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology labs use the same, small-detector radiology system hardware- a GE Innova 2100 IQ or Philips Allura FD10, for instance. Still, there are significant differences between these two lab setups that require more than a brief glance to understand. We'll discuss these below.