New state-of-the-art medical imaging technology, which can provide earlier detection of some cancers, is coming to the Barrie hospital within the next 17 months.
On Friday afternoon, Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) president and CEO Janice Skot was joined by Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MPP Doug Downey and Barrie-Innisfil MPP Andrea Khanjin to announce the provincial government’s $1-million investment to help get the new equipment in place.
The government funding will help RVH construct space in the hospital’s medical imaging department to house a positron emission tomography-computer tomography (PET-CT) scanner. Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario) will fund the $2.7-million cost of the PET-CT.
Skot said the machine is expected to be operational by the fall of 2023 and that it's an important addition for the whole region.
“The RVH is the region’s health centre and our obligation is to make sure we have the best tools in the hands of our very skilled professionals,” Skot told BarrieToday. “This piece of technology will be the first and only of its kind between Sudbury and when Newmarket has theirs, which means we really have this region well taken care of.”
The addition of the PET-CT is also made possible by a $500,000 donation from Barrie Welding and Machine, as well as support from Jane and Dr. Paul Voorheis, a longtime RVH radiologist, former imaging medical director and interim chief of staff.
The PET-CT can accommodate approximately 30 to 40 patients a day and uses a dual imaging system that combines important diagnostic functionality (PET) with the anatomical assessment of organs (CT).
This very sensitive and advanced technology uses molecular imaging to detect certain cancers, such as lung, breast and colon.
As RVH expands its program in the future, the PET-CT can also be used to assess other conditions, including heart disease.
Dr. Drew Schemmer, RVH’s chief of medical imaging, called the PET a “game changer” in that it allows health-care staff to see what is happening at both a molecular level or a functional level, but also a structural level.
“We can tell people who may have had cancer if the small activity we see on a CT study is actually truly reccurence or is just part of a scar,” Schemmer said. "That has a vital impact on how they treat their emotional health and also what we’ll do in terms of medical therapy thereafter.”
RVH officials say they anticipate performing more than 1,000 scans the first year the PET-CT is in operation.
There are currently 13 PET-CT scanners in just seven Ontario cities.
RVH’s regional cancer centre opened in 2012, as part of the hospital's expansion that doubled the size of the health centre. Since then, the regional cancer centre has logged nearly 900,000 patient visits, providing consultation, treatment and follow-up care closer to home for almost 40,000 individual cancer patients from throughout the region saving countless hours and travel miles.
