Surgical research and innovation celebrated
While screening can pick up cancers in the breast and bowel, there is currently no method to detect the disease in the head and neck. To trial a screening method, ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon Leo Pang has planned a one-day outpatient drop-in screening program at Royal North Shore Hospital in early 2024. “It’s a program to see whether or not we can design something that’s open to anyone in the community to just walk in, get the risk factors checked, and to have a thorough examination so we can pick up these early cancers before it’s too late,” he said. Dr Pang’s clinic will come to life thanks to the $5000 Ray Hollings Surgical Excellence Award he received in May this year. He was one of four recipients awarded funding to pursue surgical research and innovation. Under the Ray Hollings award, Clinical Associate Professor Mark Sywak was given $10,000 to support a NSW first-ever clinical trial study on Radio-Frequency Ablation for the management of benign thyroid nodular disease, while Dr Amanda Chung received $5000 to support a randomised controled trial aimed at improving surgical patient comprehension and communication of their surgical procedures.
ENT surgeon Leo Pang was the recipient of a Ray Hollings Surgical Excellence Award
“It can range from skin cancers to lumps and bumps, and you don’t have to be a smoker to get throat cancer,” he said. The doctor said he was inspired to find a way to screen for the cancers as “time and time again”, he diagnoses young patients, sometimes in their early 20s and 30s, who have no risk factors.
A $5000 Harry Cumberland Travelling Scholarship was awarded to Dr Alex Papachristos to study a novel ctyo-immunotherapy for a type of thyroid cancer. Both awards were established through donations from the surgeons they are named after and are offered annually. They were given at an event jointly hosted by the RNSH Surgical Education Research and Training Institute and the Department of Gastroenterology. Aside from the outpatient clinic, Dr Pang plans to use the funding to host a forum with around 100 GPs to raise awareness about head and neck cancer, which is the seventh-most diagnosed cancer in Australia.
46 NSLHD 2023 Year in Review
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