MEDIA RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 25, 2011
BGH Lab Results Show Steady Increase in Demand for Services
Leeds/Grenville: The Brockville General Hospital (BGH) Lab reports a steady increase in demand for services over the past 10
years—an increase in pathology services alone of over 20%.
“The trend has been consistently upward in terms of surgical pathology specimens processed here in the BGH Laboratory Services,”
says Dr. Naguib Yassa, Chief of Pathology for BGH. “In a recent report we generated to look at the trending from 2000 to 2010 for
future projections, we saw a consistent upward climb in numbers from 5908 surgical specimens in 2000 to 7244 a decade later.
That’s an increase of 22%.”
This is despite the loss of outpatients specimens temporarily in 2005. “We thought the volume would go down significantly,” says
Yassa, “but it barely slowed down the steady increase.”
Pathology results are a key element in patient care with regard to decisions of care management. If the issue is cancer, the
“grading” and “staging” of the cancer will decide the method(s) used to fight the disease.
“Let’s take two cancers that are becoming more common each year—breast and prostate. If we are working with breast cancer,” Yassa
explains, “pathological results on dissection of the lymph nodes, for example, will confirm if they are involved, how many and how
far along the cancer is. For prostate, we confirm the level of invasion. Has it spread beyond the capsule wall? We establish the
grading and differentiation of the tumor. How aggressive is it? These questions need to be answered for care to begin.”
With an aging population, the upward trend in volume of lab pathology services here in the Brockville area is expected to continue
and perhaps increase. This may include the other services performed in the BGH Lab department, such as Transfusion Medicine,
Chemistry (monitoring glucose, thyroid therapy, or dialysis patients), or Hematology (blood work).
In all cases, seamless and timely service is essential.
“Particularly with cancer specimens,” says Yassa, “the earlier the results are confirmed and forwarded to the physician, the faster
the management discussion can take place between doctor and patient. That is a crucial issue with patient care. This is why
introducing Telepathology in the hospital lab would greatly enhance the facilitation of laboratory support for clients of BGH.”
The Brockville and District Hospital Foundation’s Annual Appeal for 2011 is targeting $135,000 for the purchase of a Telepathology
system for the BGH Lab. Telepathology is the use of electronic imaging and information sharing of digital images of pathology
samples for second, expert opinion in support of diagnosis, enabling fast and accurate diagnosis for patients regardless of where
they live.
Cancer treatment isn’t the only pressing need involving pathology results. However, a recent release from Statistics Canada says
that 2008 was the first year on record that cancer was the leading cause of death for Canadians right across the nation.
“The profile is rising,” Yassa admits. “It’s not good news but we need to respond. Hopefully, with the advent of Telepathology at
BGH, we will increase better treatment outcomes for the people of Leeds and Grenville.”
Passion for Pathology: BGH Lab staff (l – r) Kim Schonewille, Medical Lab Technologist (MLT); Kim Porter, MLT; and Karen Reide,
Charge Technologist; work at the “embedding” center, where specimens are embedded in wax as one step in the process of making
slides for pathological assessment.
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