CLARENVILLE, N.L. — General surgeon Dr. Ryno Verster says implementing a new, innovative surgery for breast cancer treatment is something to strive for, offering patients of G.B. Cross Memorial Hospital the best available techniques.
“It makes me feel like we’re offering modern breast cancer surgery,” Verster told The Packet on Friday, Nov. 29.
He says, the hospital is now where it should be, after “lagging behind,” regarding the advent of new technology and procedures.
“A lot of that’s got to do with where we are geographically and what’s available to us—but we now can offer essentially what can be offered at any hospital in North America.”
He’s been working to introduce the procedure since seeing European medical articles on the new technique which uses a magnetic tracer instead of a radioactive tracer.
“Over the last year or so, we’ve been making inquiries and about a year ago it was licensed for use in Canada, Health Canada approved it, as did the (Food and Drug Administration) in the U.S.”
The product and equipment is distributed by a company in Montreal.
“We got it almost the day it arrived (initially),” said Verster.
The treatment itself is called the Sentimag system, using magnetic particles during a less invasive surgery to identify the lymph nodes to which cancer cells are most likely to spread.
“This sentinel lymph node biopsy has been around for quite some time but up until now you needed nuclear medicine to be able to do it,” explained Verster.
MAGNETIC METHOD
With nuclear medicine departments mainly located in larger centres, these types of surgeries were not performed in Clarenville.
However, with the new magnetic method, Verster expects to be able to do up to 40 per year. He estimates that he performs about 250 major operations per year.
It’s the first of its kind in Canada after being introduced by Verster in Clarenville in September. Since then, he’s already performed about a dozen of the procedures.
The new procedure sees the injection of a magnetic tracer into the patient’s breast, using a handheld probe, they can identify the lymph nodes that have taken up the magnetism that has migrated to the lymphatic tissue in the armpit.
“We’ve had a 100 per cent success rate in achieving what we want with this equipment.”
This type of procedure is typically for early stage breast cancer patients, adds Verster.
“Most of the patients we see fortunately do have early stage breast cancer because the screening program is so good … I would estimate about 75 per cent of our new breast cancer patients would be eligible.”
And since this procedure is less invasive, it helps prevent lymphedema or swelling of the arm, which creates the possibility of soft tissue infections, as well as shoulder dysfunction, more pain and longer hospital stays.
The funding for this new equipment comes from the Discovery Health Care Foundation and the Dr. H. Bliss Murphy Cancer Care Foundation.
“We’re very grateful to them … and people in the community who support the foundations. It’s good for them to see that their money is coming back in.”
Twitter: @jejparsons
