Usher thinks it's important for the U.S. Government to continue looking into the radiation exposure for both the patients and clinician safety.


"Certainly, it will have an impact on the entire industry," she says. "We are all working to have the best clinical images with the lowest dose possible, and there is a lot of attention to this at the moment across the industry. We want to cooperate and see how we can help. In OEC, low-dose features allow physicians to balance the clinical images they are trying to receive with minimizing the dose."

Refurbished Market

In business since 1993, Burbank, Calif.-based Imaging3 Inc. deals strictly with remanufacturing and refurbishing GE/OEC C-arms. Since the government decree shut down shipments of the industry-leading OEC products for a while, they saw a slight lag in business in 2008, but everything seems to have returned to normal.

"It hurt us on 9800 and some 9600 C-arms, as there was a shortage at that particular time, so we were doing a lot of 9000 and 9400. The 9800 and 9600 that people had they were holding on to," says Ike Balian, VP operations for Imaging3 Inc. "Today, there's an influx in 9800 and 9600 that we have access to. A lot of the C-arms were released and are now more readily available and business picked up a great deal in the last year or so."

When it comes to C-arms, overseas buyers are becoming savvy and more demanding of increasingly advanced equipment and the need for C-arms around the world has created more opportunities and a higher level of competition for used and refurbished companies.

"Business has taken leaps and bounds over the past year," says Ray Phillips, of Oklahoma City, Okla.-based Drand Medical. "By expanding our services significantly in the C-arm and radiology sector, we have been able to stay competitive and prosperous. We have been able to provide our customers with complete solutions to their end-of-life equipment needs."

For those going the refurbished route, David Denholtz, CEO of Florida-based Integrity Medical Systems, Inc., cautions that customers need to be wary.

"Most of the equipment we see being sold as refurbished is not refurbished, or even tested correctly to determine quality and performance," he says. "If you are not getting at least a one-year warranty, then do not consider the system refurbished."

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