Gynecologic services now closer to home

By Chris Jones/The Oshawa Express

Women in Durham Region will no longer have to travel to Kingston or Toronto for gynecologic cancer surgery services.

Lakeridge Health in Oshawa has officially opened the doors of its new Gynecologic Oncology Centre.

Lakeridge is the third community hospital in Ontario to be named as a Gynecologic Oncology Centre.

The goal of opening the centre in Oshawa is to make it easier for women who need complex cancer surgeries to receive their care while being close to home.

Before the opening of the centre in Oshawa, women would often have to travel to hopsitals in the east or west for complex and often stressful surgeries.

Jane Dimitriou-Currie was one such patient. After receiving her diagnosis, she had to travel to Kingston multiple times for treatment.

With the opening of the centre, Dimitriou-Currie says that she is thankful that women around Oshawa and Durham Region no longer have to be away from their families during what she calls “such a perilous journey.”

After opening the centre, Dr. Julie Francis says, “It feels fantastic because I’ve been working here for a long time and I really love the team here, and we’ve worked really hard over the past year to bring all of this together.”

Francis believes the opening of the new centre in Oshawa will make a significant impact in the community because “it’s allowing people who were never referred to this cancer clinic to start using the clinic now for gyno services.”

The new centre will provide patients with comprehensive specialized radiation, systemic and surgical treatments for reproductive cancers.

“This centre will improve a patient’s experience,” says Dr. Francis. “Through the use of minimally invasive techniques, women will experience less pain, faster recovery and smaller incisions.”