Bayer’s Andreas Ackermann, with Dr Sam Hare, Dr Aniket Tavare and BIR chief executive Jacqueline Fowler.
A team that has developed a new system to accelerate and improve early diagnosis of lung cancer, a first for the UK, has won the BIR/Bayer Make it Better Award which was presented at UKRC in Liverpool.
Dr Sam Hare and Dr Aniket Tavare from Barnet Hospital, part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, were presented with the award by Bayer country head radiology UK Andreas Ackermann and BIR chief executive Jacqueline Fowler. Dr Hare said: “We are thrilled to have received this award and look forward to sharing our work so that this system becomes standard practice in other trusts.”
The image-guided procedure, combined with use of Heimlich valve chest drainage (HVCD) for significant post-biopsy pneumothorax, allows safe management of such patients in an outpatient, ambulatory fashion whilst saving hundreds of hospital beds. An early discharge protocol allows over 90 per cent of patients to go home just 30-60 minutes after their biopsy, compared to the standard UK practice of four to six hours. Using the unobtrusive HVCD, device is eight to nine times less expensive than a standard, bulky inpatient chest drain.
See the full report on page 2 of the August 2016 issue of RAD Magazine.