X-RAY INSTALLATIONS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 217, 10 June 1936, Page 9

X-RAY INSTALLATIONS

Equipment for Treatment of Cancer SOME FRANKLY OUT OF DATE Criticism of some of the equipment provided for cancer treatment was included in the report presented at the annual meeting of the New Zealand branch of the British Empire Cancer Campaign Society in Wellington yesterday, and it was decided to make representations on the subject to the Hospital Boards’ Association and the Department of Health. “It is generally agreed that a number of the X-ray installations in use for the treatment of cancer in New Zealand are, judged by modern standards, defective in one respect or another," the report said. "Some are frankly out of date and in others such improvements as have been made in recent times in regard to shock-proofing, protection against stray radiation and stability of potential are lacking. It wMuld appear that the proper equipment for a metropolitan centre of the size that exists in New Zealand must include a deep therapy plant incorporating these improvements. The recently introduced low-voltage apparatus associated with the name of Professor Chaoui promises to be an instrument of such wide applicability in the treatment of certain types of growth that it may well form part of the equipment of a modern cancer treatment centre.

“As far as radium is concerned, we believe that we have sutiicient for our immediate needs,” said the report. “In addition to that contained in the radon plant at Wellington, there is a quantity, nearly all of which is in suitable containers and suitably screened, distributed among the treatment centres.” The meeting decided to recommend to the Hospital Boards’ Association and the Department of Health that the four main hospitals should be equipped with modern deep X-ray therapy plants of a capacity suggested by the society, and also that in the four main hospitals the departments devoted to diagnosis and treatment should be separately housed and staffed. A recommendation from the central committee to the society was that the physicist should visit each main hospital for three weeks to standardise and test apparatus, and should then visit each centre for at least one week in each quarter to ensure its efficient operation. It was explained that it was not intended that the therapy apparatus should necessarily be of one design or make, as long as a modern type capable of delivering the required voltage was installed.