The diagnostic machine will arrive on a large trailer Friday morning
A long awaited PET/CT scanner is arriving in Windsor Friday morning.
The diagnostic machine will prevent hundreds of local patients from having to drive up Highway 401 to Mississauga, London or Hamilton to get a scan, which is primarily used for cancer diagnoses.
Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj says it will arrive on a 53-foot by 8-foot trailer Friday morning at 8am.
Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj stands in the location where the new PET/CT scanner will be located. February 12, 2019 (Photo by AM800's Teresinha Medeiros)
The machine and the enclosure it is in, will be installed just east of the Windsor Regional Cancer Centre in the healing garden.
It will take about four to five hours to unload it and it will affect traffic near the cancer centre on Alsace Ave.
Once the machine is installed, Musyj says staff will need to be comfortable with it.
"We have staff training which takes place and the first patient should be seen middle of May and it should be full up and running by the third or last week of May," he says.
Musyj says the machine should be around for a while.
"When we move to the new acute care hospital, this is portable, so if it still has life in it, it will come with us," he says. "Pretty much every decision that we make, has that in mind."
It is estimated between 600 and 700 people will use the PET/CT scanner annually.
The Ministry of Health is picking up the entire cost of the device at $3.5-million. Windsor was the first municipality to have the machine paid for by the province.