Deep in the basement of the centre's new Marylebone building – in a radiation-proof concrete bunker just a few feet away from the Bakerloo tube line – a machine to rival any Hollywood techno-monster lies in wait. The Cyberknife, an inappropriate label for the device that is more ray gun than surgeon's scalpel, fires its beams of electrons with pinpoint accuracy as its linear accelerator whirls around the prone patient.
Such technology – alongside two other linear accelerators in adjoining bunkers – accounts for quite a slice of the £70m invested in the London Clinic's showpiece centre. While we marvel at the arrival of expensive space-age gadgetry, available of course only to a few private patients, it is disappointing to note the UK remains among the stragglers in adopting the technology already widely installed across Europe and even in India.
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The NHS may be in line for one of these expensive gadgets – one for the entire country – sometime next year apparently, but that will not prevent many of us feeling short-changed when doctors have to deny patients access to vital treatments for lack of resources.
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