Thanks to the kindness and dedication of our supporters, we are delighted to announce that the Surface Guided Radiotherapy Treatment we are currently raising funds for through our 25th Anniversary Guiding Light Appeal is now in place – and our clinical colleagues have used it to treat its first patients!
Fylde breast cancer patient 68-year-old Anita Brown (pictured) has become Rosemere Cancer Centre’s first patient to start and finish a course of radiotherapy treatment using the new, £1.3 million SGRT mapping system.
Anita, along with other patients now beginning radiotherapy for breast cancer, will benefit from the system as the new, top-of-the-range equipment has now been installed in all of Rosemere’s Cancer Centre’s six radiotherapy treatment rooms and its CT scanner room.
Dan Hill, chief officer of charity Rosemere Cancer Foundation which is funding the equipment, said: “We are delighted to now be bringing the benefits of SGRT to local cancer patients. The plan is start with a small number of our breast cancer patients and then to roll it out to all other radiotherapy patients over the coming months.
“Rosemere Cancer Centre has become the country’s largest, single SGRT site and one of SGRT’s earliest UK adopters – Rosemere is just the 15th out of the UK’s 65 specialist cancer centres able to provide it. We would like to thank everyone who has helped us make it possible by supporting our last year’s Guiding Light Appeal to fund the project.”
SGRT has many benefits; it’s a non-invasive guiding system that uses a near infra-red light to better position patients so their radiotherapy treatment is delivered with improved accuracy and speed, reducing the risk of treatment side-effects, overall exposure to radiation from repeat positioning scans, and their treatment time in general.
It also means that patients will no longer need to have permanent tattoos as guide markings for their treatment, and it means also that enclosed face masks that have to be worn by some head and neck cancer patients – which many of them found to be claustrophobic – can be swapped for more comfortable open masks.
To date, thanks to the kindness of our donors, volunteers and fundraisers, we have raised over £800,000 of our £1.3 million total (including recent grants of £7,500 from the Sir John Fisher Foundation and £2,000 from the Hospital Saturday Fund) to purchase this equipment; the suppliers of the equipment agreed to fully install it despite it not being completely paid for yet.
However, this means that although our patients are now seeing the benefits of the kit, we still need to ensure we raise the full Appeal total.
Can you help us?
If you’d like to make a donation to our Appeal, to help ensure this revolutionary radiotherapy treatment benefits patients across the region for years to come, you can do so here online – or alternatively, take a look here on our website for other ways you can show your support.
Thank you
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