Jenny Vassie and Dr John Violet with the linear accelerator machine. Picture: PAUL JEFFERS
By Laura Wakely
SUNSHINE Hospital is speeding up cancer patients recovery with a new linear accelerator machine.
The accelerator, or linac, has doubled the treatment capacity of the hospital’s Radiation Therapy Centre from 450 to 900 new patients a year.
The centre was opened in March as a partnership between the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Western Health.
The linac provides radiation therapy by pinpointing high-energy x-rays to the region of a patient’s tumour.
This destroys cancer cells while reducing the impact of radiation on healthy cells.
Site director Dr John Violet said the new equipment would improve access for cancer patients across the West.
“Since opening our doors in March, more than 200 people have been referred to the centre for treatment and with one linac we were operating close to capacity” Dr Violet said.
“The launch of the second linac enables us to treat twice the number of public cancer patients, closer to where they live.”
Dr Violet said the centre had a “holistic approach” to cancer treatment, with nurses, speech pathologists, occupatiionaltherapists, dieticians, physiotherapists, social workers and psychologists joining the radiation oncologists and therapists.
More than 4000 people in the region have been diagnosed with cancer in the past five years.
In 2011, three quarters of all patients at the centre had breast, bowel, prostate or lung cancer.
