By 2003, the people of the west will have a better chance of fighting cancer than formerly with the opening of a £10 million-plus radiotherapy centre at University College Hospital Galway (UCHG).
Regarded as an indispensable tool in the treatment of cancer, 50 per cent of all patients have been found to respond to radiotherapy yet only 20 per cent of Irish cancer patients are being treated with radiation therapy.
With cancer services here behind the rest of Europe, the development of a new centre in Galway along with the doubling of the cancer treatment facilities in Cork will go some way towards addressing this deficit.
Radiotherapy treatment that until now was unavailable to cancer patients from the west unless they were able to make the gruelling journey up and down to Dublin will soon be available locally.
The principal physicist at UCHG, Mr Wil van der Putten, explains it is becoming one of the most advanced hospitals in the State in terms of hi-tech equipment.
The new radiotherapy centre will house about £5 million worth of equipment and the construction of the centre itself will be a major undertaking.
The highly sensitive radiotherapy equipment will be housed in a sunken building behind the main five-storey building in bunkers surrounded by concrete walls which will be 2.5 metres thick in parts.
A simulation x-ray machine will determine exactly where the tumour is located before the patient is treated in one of the three £1 million linear accelerator radiotherapy machines. As each machine lasts 15 years and treats up to 50 people a day, radiotherapy is considered a cost effective method of treatment compared to other medical oncology therapies.
The new machinery at UCHG will allow the radiation to be tailored to give a strong dose to the tumour and a minimal dose to the surrounding tissues.
Radiotherapy treatment takes up to 30 days as each dose has to be split into fractions to ensure all the tumour cells are killed and the healthy tissue has time to recover in between doses.
Secondary tumours can also respond well to radiotherapy treatment. A radiotherapy treatment lasts about five to 10 minutes but patients do not feel any sensation, apart from possible skin reddening a few days later. During the 30-day period, patients can either go home every evening or stay in the hostel proposed for such patients on the UCHG campus.
Radiotherapy is used as both a curative and a palliative treatment. In curable cancers it can be used along with surgery and chemotherapy to kill and shrink tumour cells and in incurable cancers, but it can also extend a patients' comfort level and lifespan.
Dr van der Putten said: "I would hope that a lot more people will avail of radiotherapy once the new centre comes on stream. If somebody in Belmullet is told to go to Dublin for seven weeks for treatment and they have to look after children and an elderly parent, radiotherapy is really not an option."
The main five-storey department building is scheduled for completion in the early summer of 2003. The architects are currently considering a proposal to install the machines in the bunkers in advance of the completion of the main building, so they could be tested and ready to start treatment in early 2003.