Hyderabad: No technician to operate cancer device

Hyderabad: The government is ordering the purchase of digital mammograms worth Rs 2 crore for district hospitals to detect breast cancer but the problem is that there are no technicians to operate them.

It is going in for the purchase without doctors asking for the equipment. A senior doctor from Osmania General Hospital said the procurement of high-end mammograms was being done for district hospitals, but teaching hospitals which have technical and paramedical staff are not being given their requirements.

These machines are to reach seven area hospitals between December 2017 and April 2018. A senior official in Telangana State Medical Services and Infrastructure Development Corporation said the order for the mammograms had come from the government which wanted the latest high-end equipment to be made available in the district hospitals.

“The doctors have not asked for the equipment. So far, the practice has been that doctors ask for the machines depending on the burden of the disease and the medical staff like nurses and junior doctors required for management,” he said.

The biggest problem in district hospitals is retaining senior doctors. “The government has not been able to sustain senior doctors in district areas. Most of them are confined in the city and the outskirts,” a senior doctor said.

“With this kind of medical set-up, putting up of high-end mammograms is not going to produce the effective results of identifying the disease early. Along with the machine, there should be a technician, a doctor and para-medical staff,” he said.

When asked about the purchase, health minister Dr C. Laxma Reddy said, “We are bringing in advanced medical care to the districts to ensure that breast cancer is detected and treated in time.”

“We will conduct recruitments once it is taken up for the various health departments,” the health minister added.

He said that the government had started  the process of recruiting doctors in February, and the other sectors will be taken up in due course.

New blood test can spot breast cancer

A new blood test that detects tumour DNA can help spot breast cancer, according to a latest research.

The test known as liquid biopsy can detect and track alterations in 13 different genes.

The test is now being used to detect breast cancer. The research shows that the test has been able to spot cancer that has spread beyond the breast and into nearby glands.

It is helping individualise treatment as the disease progresses, giving an insight into which part of the body the cancer is spreading.

Aggressive breast cancers are found to progress faster and liquid biopsy helps save organs. Scientists have been able to analyse two kinds of acquired DNA mutation in a single blood test, according to the study which was published in the Journal of Clinical Chemistry.