MRI scanner ‘vital for children’

DOCTORS at the national centre for treating children with cancer and leukaemia are restricted in carrying out vital investigative work on tumours because they have no MRI scanner.

Dr Fin Breatnach, Director of Haematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplants at Crumlin Children’s Hospital, said children were suffering as a result. He said they could not adequately investigate many patients brought to the national service.

“An MRI scanner allows you to look inside the body, it shows tumours, how they spread. It helps the surgeon in planning his operation and it helps in determining the response to treatment. It is absolutely vital to our work.” Dr Breatnach said the hospital does provide CAT scans but, unlike the MRI scanner, they emit radiation, exposure to which can produce potentially long-term side effects.

For the past number of years children at the hospital in need of an MRI scan have been transferred by taxi or ambulance, to either Beaumont or Temple St Hospitals or Blackrock Clinic, or wherever they can be accommodated. “But we can only transfer the children who are well enough to be transferred. The really sick ones can’t be sent. It means we have to do without the information an MRI scan could provide about that child and that can be very serious.”

He said it was often difficult to book an MRI scan in another hospital because of the pressure on services and, as a result, Crumlin was carrying out fewer MRI scans than it should be.

Agreement for a scanner has been reached with the Department of Health and the Eastern Regional Health Authority, but Dr Breatnach is concerned over the wait for funding.

A Department of Health spokesperson said they were committed to providing 5m for the MRI project, but she was unable to say when it would be completed. The department hope to appoint a design team shortly.