Christie Hospital to offer proton beam cancer treatment in 2018

The Christie Hospital in Manchester will soon open the first high-energy proton beam therapy centre run by the NHS which will allow patients in the UK to access a vital treatment for life-threatening cancers.

Currently, NHS patients who need this treatment had to travel abroad, but after years of planning the multi-million pound project is entering its final stages.

Patients should be able to access the treatment from August 2018.

Although a low-energy form of proton beam therapy is available in the UK at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in the Wirral, the new machine in Manchester is the first in an NHS hospital capable of delivering much higher doses to a broader range of cancers.

Ed Smith, paediatric cancer consultant, has been at the heart of the Christie project. He said: “Young patients would benefit most from this treatment because their tissues are growing and are very sensitive to radiation.

"But there are also tumours that sometimes sit next to quite critical structures in the body, say at the base of the skull or around the spine.

"And this technology enables us to give a treatment dose to those patients while avoiding these critical structures.”