Summer Session Kansan
Thursday, June 28, 1979
August opening planned
5
Cancer center nears completion
T
KANSAS CITY, Kan.—The spacious new $3.5 million Mid-America Cancer Center at the University of Kansas Medical Center will open by the end of August, making available some of the most advanced cancer treatment in the Midwest.
Carl Mansfield, chairman of the radiation department, said that the ability to treat patients with 20 million electron volt, 40 MEV and 6 MEV linear accelerators, and a cobalt-60 unit, would make the radiation centers in the country on cancer treatment centers in the country.
Installations of the new 40 MEV accelerator, built in Paris, and the 20 MEV accelerator, built in Moscow, have been completed. The Cobalt-60 unit and the 6 MEV accelerator also will be moved from the present building to the new center so that patient treatment is only minimally
Officials estimate between 5,000 and 6,000 people will be examined at the new center each year. More than 4,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed in Kansas each year, and nearly 50 percent of these patients will require radiation therapy at some time.
THE RADIATION THERAPY department at the Med Center now treats more than 1,000 patients annually and expects to treat more than 1,000 patients annually with the new treatment center.
"Cancer patients are now having to go the Mayo Clinic for some types of teatment," said Richard D. Dean, medical physicist in radiation therapy at the Med Center. "With this new facility, that won't be necessary."
The new treatment center takes up 19,000 square feet, two-thirds of which is underground. The top third is banked by earth on all but one side. Many of the rooms have 3 to improve energy efficiency and to keep radiation contained within the rooms.
DEAN SAID THE 40 MEV accelerator was one of the five most sophisticated cancer treatment tools in the United States. It was moved into the new center in April.
The 40 MEV accelerator has the ability to treat deep-seated lung and pancreatic tumors without harming the surrounding normal tissue, he said. The $1.5 million accelerator, which occupies four rooms, will enable the Med Center treat 50 patients
more than it can now when installation is complete.
Each machine has its own treatment room. Sliding glass doors allow sunlight to enter all treatment rooms from a central window. All rooms are installed to be installed soon to make the rooms quiet.
THE NEW BUILDING is designed to provide effective patient and staff work areas. Patients will be able to park near the building, and patients will be able to feel from their cars to the treatment area.
The present location of the therapeutic radiation department is a 4,000 square foot area adjacent to the emergency room. The room is located in a crowded waiting room, or in the hall.
Patients entering the new building will pass immediately into a reception area.
Additional waiting areas are provided patients after they have put on their gowns.
DEAN SAID THAT all the cancer patients treated at the Med Center were treated to cure cancer. As many as half of them developed palliatively to lessen the severity and pain of their tumors. Many types of cancerous tumors are extremely painful, Dean said, and radiation therapy is a very effective treatment that can function normally for as long as possible.
Dean said that radiation therapy had a bad reputation "even among physicians" because of lack of knowledge about its many applications, such as salliative treatment.
Much of the new building will be devoted to teaching and research in radiation
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