Media Release

Mangalore, Apr 23: The inauguration of the new cancer institute at A J hospital and handing over of the NABH certificate by Padma Bhushan Dr Veerendra Heggade (Dharmadhikari, Sri Kshetra Dharmasthala) will be conducted on April 24 at 11 am at the AJ hospital and research centre.

Dr Prashanth Marla K, medical director; Dr Kamalakshna Shenoy, radiation oncologist; Shivaprasad Shetty, marketing consultant; Bhaskara Arasa, executive media relations were present at the press meet conducted for the same.

“Media has always been of great support in all endeavors and as we launch the Cancer Institute, we take this opportunity to thank the media personnel for the excellent coverage given throughout the years and look forward to the same in the years to come,” said Dr Prashanth Marla K.

AJ Shetty, chairman and managing director, Dr Prashanth Marla, medical director; Sharada Shetty, trustee; A Prashanth Shetty, director, Dr Amitha P Marla, director administration and Ashrritha Shetty director will attend the inaugural.

Dr K S Sriprakash, vice chancellor, Rajiv Gandhi university of health sciences, Bangalore; Ajai Kumar, chairman and managing director, Corporation Bank and professor K Karthikeya Varma, director and senior paediatric, Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences, calicut will be the main guests during the inauguration.

AJ hospital and research centre came into existence in the year 2001 with the objective of providing world class healthcare facilities in Mangalore. 

It was AJ Shetty’s dream to make the best of healthcare facilities available in the coastal region of Karnataka.
 
About Cancer Centre

AJ hospital and research centre has always been in the forefront providing the best of healthcare that matches the best in the country.  It has many firsts to its credit in the field of patient care and latest equipment. 

AJ hospital has developed a state of the art, comprehensive cancer centre with all the specialties such as radiation oncology, medical oncology, surgical oncology and nuclear medicine, which is the first of its kind in the entire district of Dakshina Kannada.

These days, a cancer diagnosis is not automatically seen as a death sentence. Over the years, successful treatments have allowed cancer patients to carry on longer and more productive lives. 

One such treatment is radiation therapy, which attacks cancerous tissue using ionizing radiation.  It plays an important role in cancer management. Today 45% of all cancer patients can be cured.  About one half of them are cured by radiation therapy applied alone or in combination with surgery or chemotherapy.

The department of Radiation Oncology has procured a high end linear accelerator and a high dose rate Brachytherapy machine which has the following features and facilities:
 
•        Triple Energy Photon Therapy
•        Six Energy Electron Therapy
•        3Dimensional Conformal Radiation Therapy (3D CRT)
•        Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)
•        Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT)
•        High Dose Rate Brachytherapy (HDR)
 
A J Hospital Radiation Oncology team provides expert, comprehensive and compassionate care to patients with cancer.  The team of multidisciplinary oncology specialists work together to develop individualized treatment plan for each patient.  The referring physicians and other oncologists involved in the patient’s care are kept fully apprised of those plans and the patient’s progress during and after radiation therapy.
 
The primary goal of the hospital is to deliver treatment safely and effectively and in ways that enhance and benefit the overall experience for our patients. The hospital uses the most advanced treatment planning and quality assurance equipments, for the precise and accurate delivery of the radiation therapy. The department conducts the quality assurance checks of all its machines regularly.  The hospital fully complies with the guidelines of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB, Mumbai).
 
3-Dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3D CRT): This is the most common type of external radiation therapy. It uses sophisticated computer software and advanced treatment machines to deliver radiation to very precisely shaped target areas.
 
Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT): It uses hundreds of tiny radiation beam-shaping devices, called collimators, to deliver a single dose of radiation. The collimators allow the intensity of the radiation beams to change during treatment sessions. This kind of dose modulation allows different areas of a tumor or nearby tissues to receive different doses of radiation. The goal of IMRT is to increase the radiation dose to the areas that need it and reduce radiation exposure to specific sensitive areas of surrounding normal tissue.
 
Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT): In IGRT, repeated images are performed during treatment. These images are processed by computers to identify changes in a tumor’s size and location due to treatment and to allow the position of the patient or the planned radiation dose to be adjusted during treatment as needed. Repeated imaging increases the accuracy of radiation treatment delivery.

Electron Therapy: Electron beam therapy is used in the treatment of superficial tumors like cancer of skin regions or total skin (e.g.Mycosis Fungoides), diseases of the limbs (e.g. melanoma andlymphoma), nodal irradiation and it may also be used to boost the radiation dose to the surgical bed after mastectomy or lumpectomy.
 
Brachytherapy:  Unlike all the other treatments, Brachytherapy involves the treatment of cancer using a radioactive isotope which is kept inside the tumor to boost the radiation dose to the tumor without affecting the normal structures.  It is commonly used in gynecological cancers, oral and esophageal cancers.
 
NABH certification

Keeping pace with the technical advances, A J Hospital did not lag behind in quality patient care.  It has maintained very high quality standards and was the first hospital in this region to get ISO 9001-2000 certification by TUV in the year 2004, in a short span of 3 years from inception. 
Since then A J Hospital has proved its commitment to “Quality Care” and has been successful in getting NABH accreditation, which is again first in this region.  Only 165 hospitals in the country are certified by the QCI for NABH.
 
National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH), a fully autonomous Constituent Board of the Quality Council of India (QCI) has been set up to establish and operate accreditation programs for hospitals, health care organization and sets benchmarks for the progress of the health industry.  NABH supported by all its stakeholders including industry, consumers and government, is itself accredited by the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua).