'˜Invaluable' new equipment for prostate cancer patients at St Richard's

Urology department staff at St Richard's alongside Love Your Hospital and PCaSO members with the new scanner

That’s after a charity’s £6,500 donation has provided a new bladder scanner at the Chichester hospital.

Love Your Hospital, the dedicated charity of Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust which runs St Richard’s, received the generous donation from the Prostate Cancer Support Organisation (PCaSO), which works along the south coast counties of East and West Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset supporting men diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The urology department at St Richard’s see more than 150 outpatients every week and clinicians will now use the scanner as a diagnostic tool to non-invasively assess the health of the lower urinary tract, looking for possible signs of prostate or bladder cancer.

Suzie Venn, consultant urologist at St Richard’s Hospital, said: “The new scanner allows us to provide a one-stop service for patients coming in to see us.

“We can now provide important tests for patients without the need for multiple visits to the clinic, speeding up their pathway through the hospital. “This new scanner is invaluable and the urology team are so very grateful for this support from PCaSO.”

The portable, 3D ultrasound bladder scanner uses sensitive electrons and ground-breaking technology to provide better accuracy and will reduce the need for unnecessary catheterisation.

Roger Bacon, chairman of the PCaSO Sussex Branch, said: “We are proud of the work that our friends in the urology department at St Richard’s and Worthing Hospital do.

“They help men undergoing treatment for prostate cancer and we are keen to make their job as easy as possible.

“Anything that saves time while giving fast and useful information to the clinicians is worth supporting.”

Amanda Tucker, head of charity for Love Your Hospital, added: “PCaSO’s aims to provide extra investment into our local NHS facilities is on par with the objectives of Love Your Hospital, which raises more than a million pounds each year to provide outstanding healthcare at St Richard’s, Worthing and Southlands Hospitals.

“We are so very grateful for the support PCaSO continues to provide to St Richard’s Hospital and to local prostate cancer patients across West Sussex.”

In 2016, PCaSO donated £25,000 towards new template biopsy equipment, enabling staff to investigate the whole of the prostate more accurately and reducing the need for patients to travel further outside the area for testing.

For more information on how you can support PCaSO and Love Your Hospital, visit http://pcasoprostatecancersouth.org and www.loveyourhospital.org