Canada's 3rd CK at Ottawa Hospital - starts treating patients in Sept

from the IV MB, by yyy60:

>>The Canadian Business Journal
July 2010

Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre - World-class cancer treatment

Once underserved, cancer patients in the Ottawa region now have considerably more access to the treatment, privacy and technology they need. This April, the Ottawa Hospital celebrated the second opening of two cancer centre expansions—the first, at the general campus, and the second, at the Queensway-Carleton Hospital (QCH).

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‘Tough to beat’

With a state-of-the-art expansion comes state-of-the-art equipment, and the Ottawa Hospital is very excited about what they now have available.

“We just got a CyberKnife,” Doering says. “It’s equipment that does radiosurgery, which allows for non-invasive treatment of tumours. It’s like a radiation treatment but it is very focused treatment. For a brain tumour, a patient would normally go in and have the have skull cut open. The recovery would be two weeks in the hospital, in the intensive care unit. With this CyberKnife, the patient comes in for three days in a row and receives a 45-minute treatment. There is no anaesthesia, no operating room and no overnight stay in the hospital. It’s painless. And it’s so precise, that it spares the healthy tissue and only focuses on the cancer.”

“The CyberKnife is also great for lung cancer, because surgeons don’t have to worry about the lungs moving as the patient breathes,” she continues. “Typical radiation is not as precise with the lung movement and it can radiate some other tissue around it. But the CyberKnife moves with the respirations, it adjusts.”

This new machine came at no small cost—it was a $3.5-million capital investment. Fortunately, the Ottawa community came together and fundraised for the CyberKnife, showing its support for sick neighbours. We have fundraised for this and I must say the community has been great.

Right now, the hospital is building the bunker for it at the general campus. “We hope to treat our first patient with the CyberKnife during the week of September 20,” says Doering. “We’re really excited about that. It treats spine, kidney, lung, brain cancers and so on. Our folks right now are getting trained on the equipment.” Speaking of which, Ottawa has the only trained neurosurgeon in Ontario for this type of equipment. “I believe when you look at the Ottawa Hospital cancer program, you will see we have the best facilities in the country, if not the world. When you factor in our equipment, facilities and specialists, we are tough to beat.”