It’s a major medical milestone for Saskatchewan. Royal University Hospital (RUH) is now being supplied locally with radioisotopes and already more than 100 patients have benefited.
Patients will no longer need to rely on good weather conditions or airlines to get a diagnosis since officials say prior to today they were being brought in from Hamilton, Ont.
READ MORE: Cyclotron to supply radioisotopes to RUH starting in June
That is until three weeks ago when the Saskatchewan Centre for Cyclotron Sciences started to supply the regional hospital with radioisotopes to be used during PET-CT scans.
“As a physician, PET-CTs are really an integral part of patient diagnosis and an important component of the medical management of the majority of our cancer patients in today’s environment,” said Dr. Paul Babyn with the Saskatoon Health Region.
Typically, patients requiring a PET-CT couldn’t get one before 11 a.m. CT, and that was on a good day, after officials told media that was when the first available flight would come in from Ontario with the isotopes.
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By using a local supply from the University of Saskatchewan instead of across the country, clinical hours can now start earlier and more patients will be seen since there is no longer the risk of an appointment cancellation or delays in the isotopes arrival.
“In the winter time flights get cancelled and even in the summer time travel logistics mean that they don’t here get when they should get here and so it’s a great day that we have brought that home,” Premier Brad Wall said.
Since June 6, more than 150 patients have received scans with the local supply and a record-breaking number on the very first day of operation.
“We pretty much used the entire supply that the cyclotron could produce in Hamilton and by the time it got here we could do somewhere between eight and nine patients at a maximum,” Babyn said.
Now, up to 12 patients a day will receive a scan helping care teams assess what therapies would be most effective for each individual patient.
“We want to tailor those therapies to that patient whether the disease has spread outside of its local area or not so the best information we can get from that is currently coming from PET-CT and that’s why it’s so important to our medical diagnosis and treatment,” Babyn said.
It’s a beginning of a new era in medicine but also an end to quite a journey.
“You have to deal with two sets of regulators, firstly Health Canada who are checking that you are delivering a product that is safe to inject into people and the CSNC (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) who are checking that your handling radioactivity that is accessible,” said Neil Alexander, executive director for the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation.
“There’s an additional challenge because you are dealing with matters that have a every short half-life so you can only use them for a certain period and then they’re useless so you have to produce the product and get it out the door and being used the same day,” he said.
At this point, researchers have the capability to provide radioisotopes to other health regions and are looking for opportunities where they can effectively supply the product.
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