Britain to adopt Indian-origin expert’s breast cancer treatment

LONDON: A pioneering breast cancer treatment developed by noted Indian-origin expert Jayant Vaidya is to be adopted and offered to patients by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), providing relief to thousands of patients from gruelling postoperation radiotherapy.

Vaidya, who is a professor of surgery and oncology at University College London, developed the treatment called TARGIT, which offers a new form of radiotherapy that is delivered during surgery, and saves the patient from returning for weeks of further treatment.

On Friday, Britain’s health authorities indicated that the single-dose radio-therapy treatment would be adpted and offered to patients widely on the NHS. Vaidya, who hails from Goa, told HT that he was keen to bring the technology to India, particularly because it would save patients who travel long distances to cities from returning frequently for postoperative treatment. TARGIT is now used in 200 centres around the world, he said.

Vaidya, who developed the technique in a laboratory in India before moving to the UK and then took it further with London-based colleagues, said he treated his first patient in the UK in 1998 and since then thousands had benefited during trials.