Fighting cancer is a team effort, and at Wyoming Valley Health Care System, we employ Northeastern Pennsylvania's leading cancer care team and cancer fighting technology. What's more, our program has been recognized by the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons as providing high-quality cancer care. This special approval is granted only to facilities that have voluntarily committed to providing the best in diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and only one in four hospitals nationwide achieve this status.
Our team is led by the region's leading expert medical oncologists/hematologists, radiation oncologists and surgeons supported by the largest and most experienced staff of compassionate and professional nurses, nurse specialists, therapists, nutritionists and social workers. Clearly, our team exemplifies the multidisciplinary approach necessary to most effectively treat cancer. Armed with the most advanced cancer-fighting technologies available today, our team brings its patients the most resources and experience for early detection, accurate diagnosis and the region's most individualized, effective cancer treatments. Here's what we offer our patients:
- A 39-bed in-patient Cancer Care Unit at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital.
- Sophisticated technologies and therapies, including the region's only Gamma Knife, high-energy linear accelerator treatment and high dose brachytherapy treatment, as well as radioactive seed implant, stereotactic radiosurgery and neurosurgery which are available at our Center for Advanced Surgery
- Advanced imaging, diagnostic and laboratory services, including: The Women's Imaging Center which offers digital mammography, stereotactic breast biopsy and R2 Image Checker; SPECT/CT, PET/CT, CT and MRI scanning; digital radiography (as of July/August 2007); and pathology.
- Picture archiving and communications system (PACS) technology, allowing physicians and health professionals instant access to superior medical images from any personal computer.
- Informational health presentations and screenings.
- Specialized cancer management, including pain management and nutritional counseling.
- A cancer registry designed to promote the continuity of quality care for the cancer patient.
- Continuous quality improvement and program monitoring.
- VNA Home Health and Hospice of Northeast PA services.
Qualities that make Wyoming Valley Health Care System the region's leader in cancer care.
MEDICAL ONCOLOGY
For patients and their families, a cancer diagnosis raises many questions:What
does this mean? How do we treat it? What do I do now? At Wilkes-Barre
General Hospital, our medical oncologists/hematologists, headed
by section chief Bruce Saidman, MD, help answer those questions,
with words and with deeds.
Because of the key role they play in the overall management of cancer care and treatment, our medical oncologists are our team leaders in the fight against cancer. They work closely with primary care physicians, radiation oncologists, surgeons, other specialists, pathologists, nurses and social workers to plan and administer therapy with one ultimate goal in mind: determining the best course of treatment for each individual cancer patient.
Our team relies on some of the regions most advanced diagnosis, such as: MRI, CT Scans, angiography, laboratory studies, stereotactic procedures and much more.
What's more, Wyoming Valley Health Care System's picture archiving and communications system (PACS), the first of its kind in our region, allows physicians and other health professionals to have instant access to a patient's medical images from any person computer. Far superior to traditional imaging systems, PACS images can be accessed at any time and manipulated and enhanced to detect tumors and other abnormalities much sooner – or those which might have gone undetected in the past.
Based on diagnosis made possible by Wyoming Valley Health Care System's arsenal of advanced diagnosis technology, our expert medical oncologists set the proper course of treatment for each individual patient. In consultation with other caregivers and based on the results of diagnostic testing, medical oncologists may prescribe:
Sometimes a combination of therapies is most effective. In all cases, the attending physician has access to ample resources to determine and individual's proper treatment, always sharing knowledge and experience with the entire cancer care team to ensure that each patient's individualized treatment is safe and effective.
Designed to specification by our cancer care professionals, our 39-bed Cancer Care Unit at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital provides all patients – especially those with a need for repeat or frequent hospitalization – with a level of comfort and familiarity that benefits their overall care plan. Similarly, our sophisticated outpatient facility at Wilkes-Barre General Hospital provides patients many of the same therapies available to our Cancer Care Unit patients. Always, our expert staff displays a compassionate and courteous bedside manner, adding an additional level of comfort for our patients and their families. And we don't stop there.
Because a cancer diagnosis is so traumatic to our patients – and because psychological well-being has been increasingly related to physical well-being in a number of medical studies – Wyoming Valley Health Care System's cancer patients and their families have access to a host of support services, including world-class psychosocial counseling offerings at Pierce Counseling Associates, Kingston, a host of monthly support group meetings and informational presentations, and so much more.
Wyoming Valley Health Care System's expert, compassionate, and individualized approach to cancer care ensures a course of treatment that best meets each patient's needs. Employing the latest and most sophisticated diagnostic and treatment technologies, our multidisciplinary team always strives to reach its most important goal: providing each patient with the region's highest quality cancer care in a compassionate, caring manner.
RADIATION ONCOLOGY
Our Radiation Oncology Department, led by Robert Rostock, MD, chairman,
makes the most of advanced technologies and the finest facilities
in the region to bring leading cancer care to each of our patients.
With a team comprising radiation oncologists, radiation therapists, registered nurses, dosimetrists, physicists and an electrical engineer, the Radiation Oncology Department is a fully integrated, sophisticated facility using ionizing radiation for the treatment of malignant and some non-malignant diseases.
Most impressively, Wyoming Valley Health Care System was the first area facility to offer the revolutionary Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). As part of this treatment, sophisticated equipment generates hundred of beamlets of radiation that can be precisely focused to destroy or limit the growth of a tumor.
Because of the incredible precision of IMRT therapy, the intensity of the beamlets can be adjusted and controlled, focusing the highest amount of radiation on the tumor, and the lowest dose to the surrounding tissue. That means fewer complications that sometimes accompany radiation therapy. IMRT treatment also means more choices and an increased quality of life for cancer patients.
Located in Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, the Radiation Oncology Department offers patients other important treatment modalities as well, including two 4 MeV Linear Accelerators, one 20 MeV Linear Accelerator with multi-leaf collimator, portal vision, remote monitoring system and electron beam for external beam therapy. In addition, as an outpatient procedure, the Department also provides a High Dose Rate Afterloading Brachytherapy Unit to deliver a high dose of radiation in a short period of time.
In
conjunction with the Department of Neurosurgery, the Radiation Oncology
Department also offers stereotactic radiosurgery and THE
GAMMA KNIFE. These sophisticated procedures deliver highly
focused radiation to the target area, but optimally spare the critical
organs and other healthy tissue surrounding the abnormality – truly
revolutionary technology.