ARI first hospital in Scotland to offer new lung cancer treatment
Friends of ANCHOR has paid for the SABR treatment system
ARI will become the first hospital in Scotland to offer a new form of lung cancer treatment.
They're going to start using SABR - which is a very accurate and intense form of radiotherapy.
It could cut the number of sessions needed to treat the illness by 85%.
The money for the new treatment was raised by Friends of ANCHOR.
Dr John McLellan, Head of radiotherapy physics at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, said: “Today we will treat our first patient using the film dosimetry system to enable highly targeted treatment to be delivered with a high dose of radiotherapy over five individual sessions.
"This number of radiotherapy sessions is dramatically reduced as conventional radiotherapy targeting a larger area with a lesser dosage can take over 20 sessions of radiotherapy to have the same affect.
“Now, we can administer advanced radiotherapy to patients much closer to home with the comfort of their families nearby.
"Previously, patients have commonly had to travel to Leeds to receive the same treatment which is not desirable as these patients are often too unwell for surgery let alone able to travel down to England to receive advanced radiotherapy.”
“We are extremely grateful to Friends of ANCHOR for approving the funding.
Without the charity’s support we would not be able to offer patients in the North-east the broad range of treatment options locally that we now have access to.
"This source of funding support is crucial to enable us to keep striving forward to provide the best possible care and treatment plan for patients."