Safdarjung hospital to now have Gamma Camera facility

New Delhi, Jan 24 (PTI) Cancer patients, who areforced to knock the doors of private centres for diagnostictests, can now avail the facility at state-run Safdarjunghospital here.

The nuclear department of the Safdarjung hospital willmake available to the people the Gamma Camera machine, whichis much more accurate and less costly, from next month,becoming the second government-run hospital in the capitalafter AIIMS to have the facility.

"The nuclear medicine department''s Gamma Cameramachine will be operational from next month. Our hospitalreceives the maximum number of patients including cancerpatients from within the city and neighbouring states. Withthis machine at our disposal, it will be a relief for many," NK Mohanty, Medical Superintendent of Safdarjung hospital,said.

The machine which costs nearly Rs five crore helps indiagnosing cancer clearly and has several advantages over theX-Ray machine and the Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanningmachine.

Unlike an MRI scan which is expensive and complicatedand cannot be used for all patients, Gamma Camera machine isless costly and a lot more useful because it allows a doctorto watch the internal parts at work with no discomfort to thepatient, he said.

"It can trace cancer in the bones and is used used forthyroid, brain and kidney scanning. It can detect bone damagethroughout the skeleton either due to cancer, infection, orothers causes. One of the areas that it has been a big successis in the early detection of breast cancer. It can be usedsuccessfully for the majority of present-dayradioactive-isotope scanning techniques," he said.

Mohanty said, "Earlier we refereed our patients toprivate diagnostic centres and AIIMS for getting a test thatrequired Gamma Cameras. Now from next month they will get itdone on the hospital premises." PTI SWT