Diagnosis to go up by 500 (From Gazette Series)

Diagnosis to go up by 500

THE early diagnosis of cancer will be available to many more patients in Gloucestershire by March of next year thanks to state-of-the-art equipment currently being installed in Cheltenham.

Charity chiefs behind the £6.5m cancer diagnostic centre being built as a two-storey extension to the Cobalt Appeal Fund's Linton House Clinic will house Gloucestershire's first PET-CT scanner, plus two new MRI scanners.

Now the Charity has announced that an extra 500 patients a year will be scanned as advances in medical technology are being incorporated into an updated design for the centre.

Chairman Dick Greenslade told the Gazette this week: "Technology does not stand still and since building work started in 2004, the design of one of the MRI scanners has been altered by the manufacturers.

"As a result, we need to change the internal layout to that particular suite of rooms. In addition, the speed of the PET/CT scanner has been increased and this has led to a decision to make more space available for those awaiting scans. "We now expect to carry out 2,500 PET-CT scans each year, rather than the 2,000 originally envisaged."

The PET-CT scanner will enable doctors to diagnose cancer at its earliest stages and monitor patients' response to drug treatments.

The NHS currently has only five in operation in the country and four of these are inside London teaching hospitals.

Mr Greenslade added: "We have scheduled the building for completion in February 2006 to allow for these important changes. The additional costs are relatively small and we anticipate making significant savings on the total original budget of £7 million."

The new centre is now expected to start MRI scanning in March 2006 and PET/CT scanning as originally scheduled in April.

The Cobalt Appeal Fund has provided free MRI scans for out-patients at the Oncology Centre, Cheltenham, for the past 13 years - saving the NHS around £180,000 a year at today's prices.

The charity also sells its MRI services to the private sector and the income so raised has been used to provide the new MRI scanners and part fund the building costs of the new centre.