Sudbury hospital now offering specialized treatment for liver, kidney cancer
Hospital aims to provide Radiofrequency Ablation to more than 100 eligible patients in northeastern Ontario
Dozens of patients a year will benefit from a new cancer treatment procedure now available at the hospital in Sudbury, Ont.
A few months ago, Health Sciences North began offering Radiofrequency Ablation. It's an out-patient, same-day procedure that uses heated electron probes for tumours found in soft tissue like kidney, liver or lungs.
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The heat kills the cancer cells — but not the healthy cells nearby.
Specialists use imaging to guide the probe to the tumour so the procedure usually takes place in the CT scan suite.
New specialist hired
In the past, patients from the northeast had to travel to Toronto or Barrie for this type of treatment according to Mark Hartman, vice president of cancer services and clinical support programs at the hospital.
He says the patients who would be eligible for this procedure are those where surgery is not the best option for them. "That's typically because they're perhaps elderly and frail, not well, and wouldn't tolerate an anaesthetic," says Hartman.
There were several factors that helped make Radiofrequency Alation more readily available for patients across the northeast.
First, HSN recruited a interventional radiologist, Dr Deljit Dhanoa, in 2015. He specializes in these types of procedures.
Many costs covered
Then, Cancer Care Ontario created guidelines for who would be eligible for this type of cancer treatment.
The agency is also funding the probes for the procedure, along with the associated staffing costs for Health Sciences North.
It is the probes themselves which are expensive, Hartman noted. Each probe can only be used once and then must be discarded.
"Although it's not a huge volume, those probes cost about $1,500 per case, as well as ... the time for the staff to do the procedure," he continued.
"So that adds up and, in the absence of a funding mechanism, that was going to be difficult for us to implement."
Hartman says the generator to which the probes are hooked up — similar to an ultrasound machine — is provided free of charge by the company that supplies the probes.
Health Science North has already treated about six patients since this cancer procedure became available a few months ago.
Hartman says he hopes the hospital will be able to provide the Radiofrequency Ablation to more than 100 eligible patients from across northeastern Ontario over the next year.