Proton Beam therapy has been in the news this week as the media has followed the saga of Brett and Naghmeh King who took their son Ashya from Southampton General Hospital without the consent of his doctors in the hope of securing the treatment for him overseas.
Now Manchester is set to have a facility to carry out the treatment, a targeted form of radiotherapy that minimises the damage of surgery to children.
The Christie Hospital is leading a partnership of local trusts which includes Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to build a unit,
In March 2010, the Manchester team was one of eight groups to submit plans to the Department of Health to deliver a national proton beam therapy service and The Manchester proposal has been selected as one of the first two providers alongside University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation.
Proton beam therapy is a cutting-edge treatment that targets tumours very precisely and can cause less damage to surrounding tissue than conventional radiotherapy.
It zaps tumours with a beam of protons, instead of X-rays, and is used to treat hard-to-reach conditions, such as spinal tumours and cancers in the brain, and is favoured for treating children because X-ray radiotherapy can be particularly damaging to their tissue, which is still developing.
Now approval is expected to be given next week for the Christie to commence building the facility. Work is already underway at the facility in London.
Brett King and his wife Naghmeh, 45, appeared in a Madrid court after they were arrested last weekend night in Velez-Malaga, after an international hunt for Ashya and were jailed while extradition procedures were taking place.
In a YouTube video, the couple said they had pleaded with doctors at Southampton General Hospital to give their five-year-old son proton therapy.
They were consequently released after a media and political storm and reunited with their son.
Currently, the therapy is only used in the UK on some cases of eye cancer, but a Czech proton therapy centre has offered to treat Ashya after hearing of his case.
