Mount Vernon Hospital Physics Department Home Page

Mount Vernon Hospital is home to the regional Centre for Cancer Treatment. The Physics Department comes in the following sections:

• Radiotherapy Physics
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Protection
• Computing support to the above, plus the associated Scanner Centre .
• Start Trial

Other hospital matters of frequent interest:-

• Combretastatin A-4 Phospate trials - please note that all correspondance about this should be directed to the phone or FAX numbers in the document linked to here; sending emails to other departmental staff will be slower because they'll just get forwarded.

Head of Department: Dr Edwin Aird .

This next section gives a set of links to commonly used sites for staff .
More information about the department is further down the page.

• Microsoft Network Search Page.
• Yahoo Search Software.
• Lycos Search Software.
• Infoseek Search Software.
• Excite Search Software.
• AOL Netfind Search Software.
• IPEM Home page.
• SCRAP Home page.
• UMDS Home Page.
• ESTRO Home page
• Arsenal Home Page.
• Newcastle United home page.

The Following page gives general information about Mount Vernon Hospital.

Mount Vernon hospital is located near Northwood in Middlesex. It is on the A404 and within easy access of the M25 and the Metropolitan line. It is a regional centre for cancer treatment and burns unit. Originally designed as a consumptive or tuberculosis hospital in 1877, it retains many of these features - the large wide halls and balconys for patients. However, the age of the buildings is no reflection of the level of equipment. Mount Vernon currently has 5 linear accelerators, a CT Sim and 2 Simulator units. The custom built scanner centre has a new Pet suite, 2 MRI scanners (0.5 Elscint and 1.5 T Siemens symphony) - and a spiral CT unit. The Cancer centre deals with over 5000 new patients each year.

The Radiotherapy physics department currently has 10 staff, and plans over 1800 patients each year. Treatment planning is done using Multidata software. The staff are responsible for Quality assurance on the Linear accelerators, and perform most dosimetry requirements.

Postal Address

Radiotherapy Physics,
Mount Vernon Hospital,
Rickmansworth Road,
Northwood,
Middlesex,
HA6 2RN
Telephone: 01923 844713
Fax: 01923 844318

Staff list:

• Peter Bownes.
• David Dommett.
• Karim Elhamri.
• Anne-Louise Ford.
• Nicki Groom.
• Claire Hardiman.
• Gerry Lowe.
• Louise McQuillan.
• Mary Oatey.
• Joy Williams.

Staff List.

• Dr. Marg Girling.
• Dr. Sue Douglas.
• Nasir Benjamin.
• Gwen Beynon.
• Marion Cooke.
• Rita Cox.
• Scott Denyer.
• Anne Matthews.

The radiation protection department currently has five members of staff, four physicists and one radiographer. They are:

• Mrs. Jane Shekdar, Head of section & RPA in diagnostic radiology.
• Dr. Sylvester Yankuba.
• Miss Shona Anderson.
• Mr. Karim Elhamri, Laser Protection Adviser.
• Miss Jean Beer.

Postal Address

The Medical Physics Department, Radiation Protection Section,
Mount Vernon Hospital,
Rickmansworth Road,
Northwood,
Middlesex,
HA6 2RN
Telephone: 01923 844186
Fax: 01923 844258

The department aims to aid the safe use of radiation in hospitals, for both staff and patients.

This is achieved by:

1. Providing advice to the employer to assist with compliance with the regulations concerning the use of ionising radiation.
2. Performing compliance and continued quality control testing of diagnostic imaging equipment and lasers, using equipment traceable to national standards.
3. Performing patient dose surveys and advising departments on methods of keeping patient doses ALARP and within national guidelines.
4. Providing a personal dose monitoring service to staff and assessing the results to ensure that they are kept below relevant dose limits.
5. Providing scientific input into quality assurance, research and teaching programmes.
6. Providing physics support to the NHS Breast Screening Programme.

Every six months the department holds a half day Popumet (Core of Knowledge) course.
The next course will be held on Thursday 15 October 1998.
Course details can be obtained from the departmental secretary Mrs Jeanette Channing. Tel: 01923 844229.

PET Physics.

Our Ecat 47 is now operational and scanning clinically.

Visit the UK-PET SIG Home Page

START stands for Standardisation of Breast Radiotherapy.
This trial is a randomised comparison of fractionation regimens after local excision or mastectomy in women with early stage breast cancer. The aim is to test the effects of radiotherapy schedules using fractionation sizes larger than 2.0 Gy in terms of normal tissue responses, loco-regional tumour control, quality of life and economic consequences in women prescribed postoperative radiotherapy for early breast cancer.
The QA Team is based at Mount Vernon Hospital and consists of one physicist and two radiographers. They are:-

• Amanda Deighton
• Karen Venables
• Elizabeth Winfield

Quality Assurance is a pre requisite for any multi – centre trial to ensure that clinical observations reflect differences in randomised schedules rather than departure from trial protocol.
Visits by the QA team to participating centres will be required to ensure adherence to the protocol and for verification on dose distribution by doing measurements on a specially designed phantom.
Further information about the Quality Assurance Programme can be obtained from the above team E-mail mcrw@mtvern.co.uk

Further information on the trial and randomisation information is available from START Trial Office, Section of Epidemiology, ICR, Sutton

This page is currently under development. It's looked after by gerry@mvhphysics.netkonect.co.uk and david_dommett@mvhphysics.netkonect.co.uk

Copyright. The images and text in this document belong to Mount Vernon Hospital, and may not be reproduced or copied without permission from the Radiotherapy Department. Produced by David Dommett and Gerry Lowe.