March 21, 2023
As home to one of Ontario’s largest and most comprehensive Nuclear Medicine programs, London Health Sciences Centre was recently designated as a Comprehensive Radiopharmaceutical Therapy Center of Excellence by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).
The certification means LHSC demonstrates leadership and advancement in the areas of quality of care, patient access, training, research, program offering, and procedure frequency.
SNMMI is the scientific body that sets the standards and publishes guidelines on nuclear medicine and molecular imaging across North America. It also certifies hospitals to ensure a comprehensive set of site and patient care-related standards are met in order to receive the Comprehensive Center of Excellence designation, which was awarded to LHSC in January.
“Being designated a comprehensive center of excellence recognizes the quality of our Nuclear Medicine program in providing a wide range of therapies to patients from across the region,” says Stephen Nelli, Coordinator for Nuclear Medicine at LHSC.
LHSC offers over 60 different types of diagnostic procedures and performs about 14,000 diagnostic procedures annually. Last year, the program treated approximately 150 patients.
“Serving as the only Designated Comprehensive Center of Excellence in Ontario, and only one of three designated centres in Canada, LHSC has met a comprehensive set of criteria to receive this certification. This means patients accessing radiopharmaceutical nuclear medicine at LHSC can be confident in the hospital’s quality of care and vast offering of disease-specific therapies available.”
Radiopharmaceutical therapy is one of the treatments used in Nuclear Medicine, providing life-changing therapies and assisting with treating patients experiencing a range of different diseases.
Radiopharmaceuticals are a type of tracer used in the application of nuclear medicine to help image how the body works. For example, in cancer care, nuclear medicine is used to detect tumors and tumor cells in the body. Injected intravenously, the radiation emitted through these tracers helps detect, diagnose, and treat various cancers.
LHSC received the certification due to the range of services and therapies the program is qualified to offer to patients, including:
- Neuroendocrine cancer
- Bone cancer
- Thyroid cancer
- Liver cancer
- Prostate cancer
As part of the certification process, LHSC’s team completed an application and interview process to outline the radiopharmaceutical therapy, Nuclear Medicine program offerings, and scope of care available to patients at LHSC’s Victoria and University hospital campuses.
This certification exemplifies how teams at LHSC are helping deliver exceptional quality and safety.
