The scanner was officially opened on 9 January by Peaches Golding OBE, Lord-Lieutenant of the County and City of Bristol.
Housed at Cossham Hospital, the state-of-the-art Siemens MAGNETOM Vida 3T MRI scanner will increase capacity for scanning outpatients, prioritising those with breast cancer, prostate cancer and gynaecological cancer. It will also be used for breast cancer imaging research.
Bristol Breast Care Centre is one of the largest in the South West, and the number of MRI scans performed each year has increased to more than 700. This new scanner will increase capacity and will be used for diagnosing breast cancer and monitoring patients undergoing treatment with chemotherapy. Overall, it will shorten the treatment pathway by reducing the current wait times for a scan.
BUST was founded by patients to support the work of the Bristol Breast Care Centre at Southmead Hospital. Run solely by volunteers, over the past 30 years they have enabled the purchase of new technology, such as state-of-the-art scanners.
Mr Simon Cawthorn, Retired Breast Surgeon and BUST Trustee, said:
This new MRI scanner has taken more than ten years of tireless fundraising of all kinds – from individual and corporate donations to runs, raffles and cake sales. Breast cancer patients and their families have been especially generous in enabling future patients to benefit from the best possible technology.
Maria Kane, CEO, North Bristol NHS Trust, said:
We are extremely grateful to BUST for this incredible gift, which will benefit everyone who lives within our catchment area, especially people who now or in the future develop breast, prostate, or gynaecological cancers.
The new scanner will also provide additional capacity to allow North Bristol to lead on national breast cancer research. This cutting-edge research, looking at a shortened version of the breast MRI scan, will benefit local women in the earlier diagnosis of breast cancer and it will contribute to a deeper understanding of this technique.
Peaches Golding, Lord Lieutenant of Bristol said:
As someone with personal experience of breast cancer, I’m so pleased to be able to honour BUST’s incredible fundraising efforts in purchasing this scanner and to open it officially. The NHS has looked after me incredibly well. And having a charity like BUST supporting breast cancer patients by going the extra mile really does help by ensuring we have the best possible equipment to enable earlier diagnosis and improve health outcomes.
