Daria, a woman with cancer, undergoes nuclear imaging tests at the only venue available to her, the Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont in Montreal.
The device works by injecting a slightly radioactive product, which, once placed in the body, provides an imaging of his disease progression.
“This device allows us to inject the radioactive product. Cancer, it’s sugar-hungry. So, for us, it’s synthetic sugar that we inject into patients. These are small doses. We use very little radioactive products,” explains Nancy Michaud, coordinator at the Nuclear Medicine Unit.
The 21-year-old patient must wait an hour before undergoing the examination. The product injected into his veins must be in effect to allow a good 3D reading during the 20-minute session with the device.
This allowed the doctor to discover new cancerous masses in another patient.
Every day, 23 patients are admitted here and come from Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, Santa Cabrini and all CISSS de la Montérégie-Est hospitals.
The device is running at full speed every day and is at the end of its life span. It was supposed to be replaced in 2018 but will be soon and will be accompanied by a new nuclear medicine unit. A project with a total value of about 22 million, which would not have been possible without the financial participation of 3.4 million from the hospital institution.
