• 10/2/2006
  • Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
  • Jeff Nagel
  • The Surrey Leader (www.surreyleader.com)

A doctor at Surrey Memorial Hospital is the first surgeon in the province using a new laser cutting technique to remove challenging cancerous tumours of the upper throat.

Armed with a laser and microscope, Dr. Don Anderson is literally at the cutting edge of the new treatment that hospital officials say is making a major difference in the lives of patients.

“It’s absolutely spectacular,” said Dr. Peter Doris, the head of surgery at SMH.

Lasers are commonly used to burn away easy-to-access tumours, he said. But European hospitals have started to use them as a microsurgery scalpel to precisely carve out tumours in hard to reach areas like the base of the tongue and voicebox.

Until now those cancers required either radiation treatment or major surgery to split open the neck – often involving a tracheostomy that could leave the patient voiceless, being fed by a stomach tube and having to slowly re-learn how to swallow.

With the minimally invasive microsurgery procedure now being performed by Dr. Anderson, those patients experience very little pain, are out of hospital in some cases overnight and usually have speedy and easy recoveries.

“I guess I’m kind of the pioneer in B.C.,” Anderson said.

He’s now performed about a dozen of the tumour removals on patients this year using the laser microsurgery after undergoing training in England and Germany.

“They’ve done well,” he said. “The patients are happy. And the hospitals are happy because the costs are less.”

Anderson inserts instruments -including a miniature camera and the laser – through the patient’s mouth and navigates using a microscope and image displayed on a monitor.

“We use a laser that’s directed by a special mirror and a red light so we can see where the laser is going to cut,” Anderson said. “The laser just cuts and evaporates tissue.”

He said they then remove the tumour in pieces to take all the cancer without harming unaffected areas.

“It’s very, very precise -more precise than a scalpel or anything else.”

Although Anderson also sometimes operates at Vancouver General Hospital, most of his laser microsurgery is being done at SMH because he says the Surrey hospital is better equipped.

Most of the money to buy the operating room equipment needed for the procedure came from the Surrey Memorial Hospital Foundation.

Patients from all over the Fraser Health region are being treated by Anderson.

Up to 400 B.C. residents per year are diagnosed with cancers of the upper throat – smoking and drinking are among the risk factors.