100th PET Scan Completed

A milestone was reached Wednesday at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre with the scanning of the 100th patient on the state-of-the-art PET imaging unit.

The 64-slice Philips Gemeni TF is considered the most advanced technology in positron emission tomography imaging, said Michael Power, vice-president of cancer services and diagnostics. “There are several key messages that we want to celebrate related to today‘s announcement,” he said Wednesday. “The first is a celebration of clinical research in our cancer program. This technology is here because of the advances in research for cancer patients,” Power said.

“And, we‘re contributing to an international effort to bring molecular imaging to patients and our clinical trials staff are to be celebrated, our functional imaging physicians are to be celebrated,” he said. “Patients in Thunder Bay are accessing state-of-the-art technology where they otherwise would not have received it last year or they would have had to pay significant dollars to get on planes to fly to other jurisdictions,” Power said.

He said the advantage of this machine is that it allows doctors to detect cancer more precisely than other diagnostic methods, and it reduces the impact of more invasive procedures like surgery. Power said other diagnostic tools like CT scanners, magnetic resonance imaging machines and ultrasound will continue to be used to detect cancer.

The tools allow doctors to take specialized pictures and look for tumours. “The CT scanner is still a significant part of cancer care business,” he said. But, Power said, a PET scan will give the lung cancer surgeon, for example, the information needed before surgery is required which will allow them to make the decision as to whether or not the patient gets chemotherapy or surgery. “This will avoid the months of recovery that‘s associated with an unnecessary radical lung surgery,” he said.

Also, the amount of radiation from a PET scanner is a fraction of that from a CT scanner. Regional unveiled the PET imaging program on May 1, 2008. Power said it is only one of seven centres in Ontario offering the technology. Power said the scanner is worth about $4 million.

The Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute funded the machine through grants from the province, federal government and research sources, and Cancer Care Ontario contributed $1.1 million. He said an average of two patients a week are receiving PET scans.

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