Letters to the Editor: Friday, July 25, 2008

I would like to take issue with a statement in your article on the Hollings Cancer Center's application for designation as a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. Your second paragraph states that if the center achieves such designation that "more Lowcountry cancer patients can get state-of-the-art treatment here instead of having to go somewhere else."

As medical director of the Roper St. Francis Cancer Center, I would like to assure the people of the Lowcountry that state-of-the-art treatment is currently available in the Charleston area. Our center, as well as others locally, currently has access to all FDA approved cancer drugs as well as skilled teams of doctors, nurses, and technicians to administer them. Our center, as well as others, collaborates with national and international study groups and pharmaceutical companies in clinical trials of new uses of approved medicines and trials to determine the effectiveness of promising experimental drugs.

Our Cancer Center is fortunate to have physicians who have trained at top cancer centers such as Johns Hopkins, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Duke, UNC, M.D. Anderson, Mass General and others who have chosen to practice within the Charleston area. We are fortunate to have the latest technological advances such as the Da Vinci robotic surgical device and the Cyberknife radiation system.

While it would be great for the Hollings Cancer Center to achieve NCI designation to assist in the laboratory and research goals of an academic medical center, the residents of the Lowcountry should feel comfortable that top-notch state-of-the-art cancer care is already readily available within our community. The need to "go somewhere else" is only necessary for the most experimental of new therapies.

DAVID M. ELLISON, M.D., Doughty Street, Suite 280, Charleston