Digital technology improves early diagnosis of digestive system cancers

Doctors learn about the use of endoscopic ultrasounds at a training workshop in Kenyatta National Hospital. PHOTO | SARAH OOKO 

By SARAH OOKO, sarahooko@gmail.com
At the Gastroenterology Department in Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), doctors were crowded in an operating room as they keenly observed events unfolding before them on digital screens.

oach allows doctors to assess the status of targeted body organs whilst determining if a patient has cancer and how far the disease has spread.

The endoscopic ultrasound used on that day was availed at no cost by Olympus – Japanese medical equipment company – with an aim of training selected doctors from various counties and East African countries on their usage.

After the three day training workshop – organised by the Gastroenterology Society of Kenya and KNH - the specialists went back to their respective countries, and so did the technologies they had come with, which benefited about 60 patients treated at no cost during that period.

The trainee doctors were lucky to have had an opportunity to learn locally, as the few local gastroenterologists that are highly skilled in such advanced medical procedures mainly got their training abroad — in Europe, America and South Africa.

But most of their skills are lying idle, as the government is yet to invest in such sophisticated technologies. “And the country is in dire need of them, to address the looming cancer crisis,” said Dr Miriti Kiraitu, Consultant Surgeon and Gastrointestinal Specialist at KNH.

Traditional ultrasounds – such as the ones being distributed to the counties through the government’s medical equipment leasing deal – are used externally.

Doctors usually place the probes on the surface of the skin, say around the abdomen area, to get images of body organs they are interested in like the pancreas or gall bladder.

Though useful, Dr Kiraitu stated that these external ultrasounds are inappropriate for the diagnosis of digestive system cancers as they usually catch them at advanced stages thus compromising treatment success rates.

He notes that computed tomography (CT) scans or Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – currently relied on to diagnose these cancers - are much better.

But they are still not effective in catching the cancers early enough (at stage one) when they can easily be cured. The accuracy levels of a CT scan for instance, said Dr Kiraitu, is about 70 per cent with regards to the diagnosis of digestive system cancers.

So sometimes doctors may think a patient’s cancer is localised only to find that it has spread to other body organs when it is already too late.