Britain's newest Radiotherapy Centre opens at Guy's Hospital campus in London

The London Radiotherapy Centre is first in the UK with latest addition to the TrueBeam™system and the new four dimensional CT scanner

The London Radiotherapy Centre has opened its doors serving private patients from The City and London in general, the South East and the Home Counties.

The £7 million unit is the first private centre of its kind in South East London and is owned and run by HCA International which also owns the six leading private hospitals in London– including the nearby London Bridge Hospital.

The unit opens as the construction of a new £100 million NHS and private patient cancer centre at Guy’s Hospital next to London Bridge railway station, gets underway. HCA will be building a private cancer hospital on four of the 12 floors of the new building.

The London Radiotherapy Centre is equipped with the latest TrueBeam™ machine offering advanced radiotherapy and stereotactic radiosurgery treatments.

The TrueBeam™ offers many benefits to patients including reduced treatment times and high dose, pinpoint accuracy which helps to protect healthy tissue. This machine is also the first in the country to have a ‘6 Degree of Freedom’ couch. This makes treatment more comfortable for patients and allows uninterrupted treatment if the patient moves. Normally treatment has to stop immediately, and the patient or the beam moved, to avoid potential damage to healthy tissue.

TrueBeam™ can treat tumours in any part of the body with sub millimetre accuracy and sessions are often faster than those delivered by conventional linear accelerators.

The London Radiotherapy centre is also equipped with a four dimensional CT scanner and radiotherapy planning facilities, consulting rooms and other patient facilities. Staff there will be working closely with clinical teams atLondonBridgeHospitalwhich with its own state of the art surgical and chemotherapy facilities can provide patients with all their needs while their cancer is being treated.

The centre’s four dimensional computed tomography scanner (4D CT) means that images not only identify the location of a tumour but also capture the movement of the tumour and additionally the movement of any organs nearby. This technology makes CT scans more accurate and faster than conventional CT scans.

The scanner rotates around the body taking constant images. These images then show the body’s breathing patterns, how the tumour moves, the movement of nearby organs and how this affects the position of the tumour at different points of the breathing pattern. The images captured during the scan allow clinical oncologists to design more accurate treatment plans for moving tumours. This means tumours can be targeted with radiation at different intervals in a patient’s breathing cycle, providing more targeted treatment and reducing the risk of side effects.

This type of4D CTimaging is particularly useful for tumours on or near to organs that move, such as in the chest or abdomen.

Sarah Fisher, Chief Executive Officer of HCA NHS Ventures said The London Radiotherapy Centre was designed with patients’ convenience in mind. “Firstly there were no private patient facilities like these in South East London and having surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy next door to each other is much more convenient for already anxious cancer patients.”

“When the new cancer centre is opened we will be able to cater for all cancer patients’ needs under one roof. We are privileged to be working so closely with Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust who have had the strategic foresight to develop a major new facility and we know from our experience elsewhere, that our private patient units will generate substantial new funds for the NHS”

For further information or for images of the new centre, please call;

Neil Huband on: 07808 298989

or email: nhuband@prioritycounsel.com

or visit: www.thelondonradiotherapycentre.com