Fight for Life
embark on a new exciting project

The Middlesex Hospital with all its services has transfered to the rebuilt University College Hospital, in the Euston Road, Central London (NW1). Our Fight for Life radiotherapy machine has moved to the new site, and we will have a new fully equipped children’s play/waiting area. The unit will be the largest Radiotherapy Treatment Centre for children in Britain with all the expertise under one roof. At this exciting time we have taken on a new project – we are leasing, along with the UCH, a PET/CT scanner, which will be revolutionising the treatment of cancer in children. There is no other radiotherapy unit with a dedicated scanner of this type in Britain.

What evidence do we have that the project is needed?

The use of PET/CT scanning enormously enhances the quality of radiotherapy planning. Several published studies have reported the frequency with which radiotherapy treatment plans need to be altered, in order to encompass the tumour fully, when PET/CT scanning is used as the primary means of treatment planning.

Who will benefit from the project?

We aim to offer this planning service to just about every child coming through our department, so that they will all benefit from the improved and developing technology. We will also offer this to adolescent patients so they too will benefit. Our adolescent bone tumour service is also the largest in the South of England, and obviously there is a range of expertise running from the paediatric age group up to the adolescent patients.

The outcomes we expect to achieve and how we evaluate the project

Our NHS Trust has just appointed a second radiotherapy consultant, so that we can expand our research interests as well as improving the service. The results of radiotherapy planning pre and post PET/CT, will be evaluated, so that the accuracy of radiotherapy planning with and without the new technique can be compared. There is also a sophisticated "normal tissue damage" grading system which we can apply, in order to test our theory that this technology will reduce the side effects to normal tissues whilst allowing a valuable increase in treatment dose to the tumour itself i.e. the primary cancer.

What will be the long term benefits of the project and how will these be sustained?

We strongly believe that PET/CT scanning will allow an increase in the dose to the cancer, without additional risk to normal tissues. Therefore hope for an improved rate of control of the cancer itself, with fewer side effects - centres from the USA and Denmark have already suggested that this is indeed the case.

When will the project start?

We have already started to raise money for the leasing costs of the new machine which was installed early in 2007 in the Nuclear Medicine Department. We are now committed to funding part of the leasing costs and our obligation is to raise at least £150,000 per annum over a three year period.

Appeal Videos