by
Brendon Nafziger, DOTmed News Associate Editor | February 23, 2012
Coming soon
The two-room center's timeline is fast, as far as these things go.
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Varian Medical Systems, a California-based company,
announced last week it won the $50 million contract to outfit the center with its ProBeam system, which includes a cyclotron and other equipment, and which it expects to install in July 2014. [Full disclosure: the equipment is being delivered through a deal with Owen Kane Oncology Equipment Inc., a New York company run by Philip Jacobus, who is also president of DOTmed.com, which owns DOTmed News.] And the facility should start treating patients by the first quarter of 2016, Stolpner said. Although some details still need to be worked out with the city, for a possible private-public partnership, it has already given 13 acres for the site, in a lease-to-buy set-up, Stolpner said.
DTC IIBS staff, from left to right:
Dr. Vladimir Kuplevatckiy, radiologist,
Dr. Arkadi Stolpner, Dr. Dariya Kuplevackaya, radiologist,
Dr. Natalia Berezina, chief medical officer,
and Dr. George Andreev, medical physicist
When it's finished, the whole complex will also include a 60- or 70-bed hospital and a hotel, Stolpner said. So far, though, the site is deserted. In fact, the stone ceremony was actually held at his group's three-year-old GammaKnife center in St. Petersburg. Partly, this was to celebrate the opening of a new CyberKnife wing of the center, but also because the proton facility's location, an undeveloped tract on the outskirts of the city is, for the moment, just "forest and snow," Stolpner said.
Patient care
Stolpner expects the center to be running at about 30 percent capacity when it starts treating its first patients. When fully operational, it will likely treat more than 800 patients a year, he said.
It's possible some of those patients could even have their costs covered by the local government. At the ceremony, St. Petersburg Governor Georgy Poltavchenko promised that the city would pay for proton treatments for St. Petersburg residents, Stolpner said. Although in general, Russian public money only goes to treatments at public hospitals, Stolpner said local governments can set aside part of their budget to cover care at private institutions. Just last year, the city paid for the treatment of about 30 of the 750 patients treated at his GammaKnife center, Stolpner said. He said this year the city also expects to increase its funding at the GammaKnife center, probably for up to 150 patients.
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