Thursday, November 04, 2010

The Barcapel Foundation Awards £25,000

The Scottish based Barcapel Foundation has awarded £25,000 to fund a Fellowship for a Scottish based doctor. Subra Viswanathan, a consultant interventional radiologist from Glasgow, was the successful applicant and started training on 18th October at UCH under the guidance of Dr Alice Gillams. During this time Subra will see treatments on liver, lung and kidney and will attend follow-up assessment clinics and multi-disciplinary team meetings and become familier with indications, approaches, potential pitfalls and follow-up appearances on imaging. Having a good knowledge of the cancers that are commonly treated as well as needle placement experience is a pre-requisite to successful ablation. The training programme endeavours to equip doctors with sufficient knowledge and experience so they can set up an ablation service in their own region.

We have had a series of enquiries from patients and health care professionals asking about the availability of image guided tumour ablation in Scotland giving us the impression that tumour ablation is not widly available or known about. Over the years a small number of parients have made the journey to London to be treated at UCH but clearly this is not an ideal situation. This award will help to increase awarenmess and availability of RFA in Scotland.

Through The Cancer Thermal Ablation Fund a further Fellowship has ben awarded to Hamish Ireland, a consultant from Edinburgh who will start training in January 2011. There is the possibility of offering training to another Scottish based doctor next year if funds permit.