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Written by Joan Davis
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Wednesday, 10 February 2010 23:42 |
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Our guest speaker in February was Dr. Peter Ostler, Director of Mount Vernon Cancer Centre, who is always a popular visitor. He brought much good news about the Cancer Centre, which is very dear to all our members.
The new £1.43m Chemotherapy Suite, paid for by charitable donations, opened on 1st February. It has three assessment rooms with 19 treatment chairs and two beds, which allows six patients to be involved in trial treatments whilst 16 receive traditional chemotherapy.
However, the reception area still needs to be rebuilt and the garden has to be developed.
Another charitable introduction, Cyberknife, which cost £4m, will be operational at Mount Vernon by Autumn 2010, the first such facility in the UK within the NHS. This very complex form of radiotherapy is controlled robotically and is extremely precise. It will allow some patients to be treated for whom no treatment was previously possible, and others will be able to have fewer, more intense, shorter treatments. Perhaps 50 patients will be treated with it in the first year, growing eventually to possibly 150 per year.
The Cancer Centre needs a research partner in order to secure future research grants. Five prestigious organisations bid for this role and it chose The Royal Marsden Hospital and the Institute of Cancer Research. Final details of the partnership are expected by the end of March.
The next Cancer Centre project will be the rebuilding of its old wards, followed by replacement of two of its nine linaccs. These could be at Mount Vernon or possibly on a satellite site at Luton or Stevenage. One project leads on to the next. These are exciting times!
Joan
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Last Updated on Thursday, 11 February 2010 16:46 |
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