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Fundraising draws $1.74-million for Vancouver Island scanner

For thousands of Vancouver Island residents, a cancer diagnosis means a journey to the Lower Mainland for a clearer picture of the disease and treatment options.

Vancouver is the location of the two existing PET-CT imaging scanners in British Columbia.

Now a fundraising campaign by the B.C. Cancer Foundation has raised nearly $1.74 million towards a PET-CT scanner for Victoria.

"In a number of cancers it's now standard of care to get a PET-CT at some point during the diagnosis and treatment," Dr. Pete Tonseth told On the Island host Gregor Craigie.

"Not all cancers are amenable to imaging but certainly the majority are," said Tonseth, a radiologist at the B.C. Cancer Agency.

Tonseth said the numbers of patients travelling to Vancouver for PET-CT imaging has grown from 464 in 2010 to 1,371 last year.

The advanced imaging is not accessible to all the patients who should have it, though.

Some unable to travel for PET-CT scan

"Travelling to Vancouver can be difficult for some patients," Tonseth said. "There are some patients who would have benefited from a PET-CT but were unable to go to Vancouver."

CAT scans use X-rays to provide anatomical imaging of the body.

The PET-CT (PET stands for positron emission tomography) uses a medical isotope to create an image of the functional parts of the body.

"Cancer cells are metabolically active and stand out against the background activity, and so we can detect the activity much better with the PET-CT," Tonseth said.

Tonseth said the difference between the two scans is that while a CAT scan shows the size and location of tumours, a PET-CT scan can show, for example, whether lymph nodes near a lung tumour are cancerous, even if they are not enlarged.

While the cancer foundation continues fundraising towards the $5-million cost of the machine, Tonseth said the provincial government will fund the operating costs of the scanner.

Judy Darcy, the NDP health critic and MLA for New Westminster, said communities should not have to rely on private fundraising for vital medical equipment.

"PET scans have become a really important diagnostic tool to investigate things like epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease, cancer and heart disease ... It ought to be part of our public health care system," she said.

Health Ministry spokesperson Lori Cascaden said said it's up to health authorities to set funding priorities for the investments that will serve their patients best.

"As we know with limited capital resources, not all priorities can be funded at the same time."

Cascaden said the province funded two new CT scanners for Nanaimo Regional General Hospital this year. Meanwhile, private donations make new equipment and improvements in patient care happen more quickly than reliance on public funding alone.