Southampton General Hospital to keep cancer-fighting machine

Mobetron is used on advanced cancers difficult to treat and remove

A fundraising target to allow a groundbreaking machine treating cancer patients to be kept in the UK has been reached.

Mobetron, a device that gives patients a high dose of radiation during surgery to help prevent the return of tumours, will continue to be used at Southampton General Hospital.

It comes after cancer charity Planets raised £1m to buy the device.

Southampton is the only UK hospital where the machine is currently used.

In 2020, the future of the device was put at risk as Planets was struggling with its fundraising campaign and the device was at risk of being sent back to the US.

Professor Alex Mirnezami said the early results were "really remarkable"

But patients will be able to continue to receive the treatment in Southampton, where the machine has been used for the past five years.

Alex Mirnezami, professor of surgical oncology at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, said early results suggested the recurrence rate in patients treated with Mobetron was "negligible".

"It does seem to really offer an extra tool in the toolbox," he said.

"We are now trying to study it in much more greater detail and in a much more scientific manner going forward to try and persuade everyone that this is a very useful tool."

Using Mobetron, radiation is delivered by high-energy electron beams to a very specific location inside the body during an operation, usually after a tumour has been removed.

This enables surgeons to deliver much higher doses of the anti-cancer treatment to areas at a high risk of recurrence without causing damage to surrounding healthy tissue and organs.