Stories of cancer treatment machines at Cork University Hospital breaking down and patients having their appointments cancelled will soon become a thing of the past following the ceremonial turning of the sod yesterday by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, for an £11 million radiotherapy and oncology department at the hospital.
According to consultant radiotherapist Dr Maurice Hurley, the development will enable the hospital replace its existing cancer-treating linear-accelerator machine and ultimately abolish waiting lists for cancer treatment.
"The new development will involve the construction of two bunkers for two new linear-accelerator machines at a cost of £4 million. That means we will be able to replace our existing linear-accelerator machine and our cobalt-treatment machine and that hopefully will allow us reduce our waiting lists to zero," Dr Hurley said.
Dr Hurley explained that the current linear accelerator is 10 years old but because it emits a higher dosage of energy than the cobalt machine, most patients cannot be transferred to the cobalt machine when it breaks down but have to have their appointments rescheduled.
"One of the advantages of the new unit will be that with two linear accelerators, if we have problems with one, we can switch patients to the other for their treatment. The cobalt machine and the linear accelerator are used for different treatments depending on the depth of the tumour and the size of the patient," he said.
al Martin, follows his approval In February the Minister invited tenders for the new building, which will take 14 months to complete. This will be followed by a further six months of equipping and commissioning.
Cork University Hospital is the only hospital outside Dublin providing radiotherapy. Over the past three years, it has carried out an increasing number of daily external beam treatments - up from 11,972 in 1997 to 15,557 last year.
"The number of treatments we are giving is rising by between 10 per cent and 20 per cent each year. We currently have 47 patients on our linear accelerator and 30 on the cobalt machine. They come from Cork and Kerry as well as west Waterford, south Limerick and south Tipperary with a few from Clare and Kilkenny," said Dr Hurley.
Aside from the two new bunkers for the linear accelerators and the associated control room, treatment planning room, nursing station, recovery room and waiting and changing areas, the new unit will also include another significant advance for the Cork hospital - remote afterloading brachytherapy facilities.
"It's a special cancer-treatment machine which is used in the treatment of some tumours which need the insertion of radioactive sources into or around the tumour - it can be done manually but this is the first time that we will have the equipment to do it remotely. It's a significant advance," Dr Hurley said.
Dr Hurley paid tribute to the Aid Cancer Treatment group which has raised £1 million towards the cost of one of the new linear accelerators and has raised over £2.5 million since it was established in 1983 to raise funds for the radiotherapy unit and breast clinic.
"Without this voluntary fund-raising group, we could conceivably have closed in the past; we owe them a great debt of gratitude," Dr Hurley said.