SHORTER WAIT FOR SCANS
PET-CTs down to one week
Wait times for scans designed to detect cancerous cells have plummeted to one week from as many as seven weeks in the year since Saskatchewan’s first radioisotope production facility began supplying Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital with fluorine-18, the radioactive imaging agent used in PET-CT scans.
Radioisotopes produced at the University of Saskatchewan’s $25-million Saskatchewan Centre for Cyclotron Sciences (SCCS), which was announced in 2011 and began operations in June 2016, have eliminated much of the uncertainty surrounding the supply of radioactive materials necessary to perform the scans, Premier Brad Wall told reporters Monday.
“Sometimes previous to our own supply I think wait times could be as short as three weeks as well (but) the problem was assurance,” Wall said at a media event in the nuclear facility’s vault.
“You can imagine if you’re facing the kinds of health-care dilemmas, potential problems that might precipitate a PET-CT (scan), one week or two weeks matters.”
Before the SCCS began producing radioisotopes, fluorine-18 was flown into Saskatoon each day from Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario. Barring flight delays, hospital staff were able to perform eight or nine scans per day — a number that shot up to around 12 once the SCCS began operations and led to a prediction of tumbling wait times.
Having to rely on a national radioisotope supplier “just left too many doubts for people in our province and other parts of the country, and a desire to have a more assured short-term supply,” Wall said Monday.
Construction of the SCCS began in 2013 and was completed about 15 months later. The facility was funded by the provincial and federal governments and the university’s Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation, which also oversees its operations. It also produces isotopes used to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases and “image” biological processes in plants.
PET-CT scans — a common abbreviation for positron emission tomography–computed tomograph — work by measuring radiation emitted by decaying fluorine-18, which is injected into a patient and subsequently absorbed by his or her cells.
Because more “active” cells absorb more of the radioactive material, high-resolution X-rays can be used to detect tumours and other trouble spots.
Wall told reporters Monday that a “disproportionate” amount of the $55 million the Saskatchewan Party government has invested in nuclear science during the last eight years has gone to nuclear medicine, primarily cancer care. He said the government plans to continue its investment in the province’s “innovation space” in the coming years.
If you’re facing the kinds of health-care dilemmas ... that might precipitate a ...(scan), one week or two weeks matters.