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High-tech cancer care Photo by Steve Johnson Suzanne Nemeth, medical physicist for the new cancer center at Providence Medford Medical Center, uses a water bath to calibrate the center's linear accelerator, which provides high doses of radiation to a patient's specific area of treatment. Medical physicist ensures Providence's new linear accelerator is in top form By SUSAN JAY The new cancer center at Providence Medford Medical Center couldn't start offering radiation treatment without one crucial person -- someone who patients often don't see, but who is instrumental to their care. Suzanne Nemeth, 37, Providence's Medical Physicist, has spent most of her waking hours the past few months testing, entering data and retesting the cancer center's $1.8 million linear accelerator. Using radiation, linear accelerators destroy cancerous tumors -- especially those in the brain, breasts, lung and prostate. The first opportunity for a patient to be treated by the cancer center's linear accelerator came Thursday. There are five linear accelerators in the country that have the same potential capabilities of providing high-dose radiation to a specific area of treatment while minimizing side effects. Providence's accelerator has a number of advanced capabilities -- including a CT Scan that can simulate the treatment fields for radiation therapy; a computerized treatment planning system used to determine dose distribution; and a radiation verification system that holds patient's information and films and is linked to a computer network. The 17,000-square-foot Providence Pavilion also offers chemotherapy treatment, onsite oncologists offices, a library and resource center, a sanctuary garden and eight apartment units for cancer patients requiring long term treatment. Providence invites the public to celebrate the official opening of the Pavilion 4:30-7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 23. The Pavilion is the second cancer center in Jackson County. The Dubbs Cancer Center at Rogue Valley Medical Center recently underwent renovation and expansion and has been operating since June 1994. Building a cancer center takes a huge effort, including recruiting specialists like Nemeth, who prepared her first linear accelerator for operation at age 23 at a community hospital in South Bend, Ind. Nemeth, who has prepared five linear accelerators for operation, is certified by the American Board of Radiology. She has a bachelor's degree in health physics and a master's degree in radiation oncology. Her job is complicated, detailed and exacting -- combining knowledge in radiation physics, medical treatment and linear accelerator operations. While patients don't often see Nemeth, she approves every patient's radiation treatment plan, after it's written by the physician and reviewed by the medical dosimetrist. A dosimetrist helps determine how to deliver the dose of radiation, in terms of angles, size of fields and length of time. Nemeth repeatedly checks the linear accelerator to make sure it's working correctly. She understands the importance of her job, but says radiation therapists "are the heart of the department." The therapists position the patients, operate the machine and talk them through the procedure from outside the room. Nemeth wanted to move to the northwest and was working on the faculty of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. before coming here. "What I was looking for was a department that had all the new technologies but was a small enough size that you felt like part of the team," she said. Her former department grew to be pretty large, she said. She enjoys her Providence teammates, including radiation therapists, nurses, dosimetrists, doctors and support staff. She has been impressed since coming to Providence. "I think they're doing a great job, because they're putting a lot of commitment into the center and there's a lot of enthusiasm throughout the hospital about it," she said. "Equipment-wise, anything that we have needed or recommended for patients or measurements or quality assurance, they've basically gotten for us." Advances over the past 30 years in radiation treatment, Nemeth said, have been driven mostly by computers and software. "There's nothing I can see on the horizon that we're not set up for," she said of the technology available in Providence's cancer center. Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA