BLUEFIELD, W. Va. -West Virginia University Princeton Community Hospital’s upcoming cancer center is planned to be underway this summer. However, one new piece of cancer care technology, described as the “first step” of the center, was unveiled on Wednesday.
West Virginia University Princeton Community Hospital has a reason to celebrate: an upgrade to their “linear accelerator,” in the form of cutting-edge, cancer-fighting technology that is the first of its kind in West Virginia. The president and CEO of the hospital, Karen Bowling, says their previous linear accelerator, which was installed in 2007, wasn’t meeting the needs of the community.
This prompted their new radiation oncologist, Dr. Joseph Baisden, to suggest buying the next-gen model, before their cancer center is completed.
“…We worked with him and the suggestion was, let’s go ahead and upgrade the equipment now. Let’s go ahead and make that three-point-five-million-dollar investment now. We know we’ll be able to move the machine when we get our new cancer center and expand services, but we don’t want to wait. If there’s something we can do now, that’s what we plan to do,” says Bowling.
It’s called the “Varian Halcyon” and lets doctors treat tumors down to millimeter accuracy, with onboard imaging allowing them to be confident in their treatment. Dr. Baisden says this has the power to speed up the treatment process, but its true strength is its location, potentially hours closer to home for the patients in their care than similar models.
With the hospital’s cancer center in Princeton not yet complete, the Varian Halcyon was installed in their Bluefield location, with plans in place to move it all together once construction wraps up. However, they wanted to meet the current demand in our area to treat cancer to a level that couldn’t be treated in the past.
Bowling says they plan on making use of this new equipment as soon as this Monday. Doctor Baisden encourages people to get screened for cancer early to allow this new equipment to be as effective as possible.
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