Latest news with #TheOttawaHospital
Ottawa Citizen
01-07-2025
- Health
- Ottawa Citizen
Saving the precious resource of blood during major liver surgery
Article content Between a quarter to a third of people having major liver surgery, often due to cancer, will need a blood transfusion. Now, imagine being able to reduce the need for this type of transfusion and the impact it would have on a global scale. This has been a vision for Dr. Guillaume Martel, a surgeon and scientist, who holds the donor-funded Arnie Vered Family Chair in Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Research at The Ottawa Hospital and University of Ottawa. Article content Article content When Dr. Martel was training as a fellow in Montreal, he witnessed a technique for liver surgery that was new to him. It reduces the amount of blood loss during a liver operation, and the idea both fascinated and intrigued him. But when he did some digging, the young doctor realized there wasn't much background on the technique and there were no clinical trials — no concrete evidence to prove its value. Article content When he arrived at The Ottawa Hospital, it became a personal mission to learn more about the technique, known as hypovolemic phlebotomy, where a controlled amount of blood is removed from the patient before liver surgery, then re-infused back into the patient afterward. Once he and his team, including anesthetist Dr. Chris Wherrett, perfected the technique, they decided to do their own research, in order to have concrete evidence showing the impact of this practice-changing medicine. Article content Article content Often donations from the community help get the early phase research projects off the ground, attracting large-scale funding through grants to launch in-depth investigations. Article content Once Dr. Martel's team had tested the safety and feasibility of the technique in major liver surgery as part of a Phase 1 trial at the hospital, they launched the largest trial of its kind, thanks to funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Article content Over five years, ending in 2023, 446 people were recruited at four Canadian hospitals, including The Ottawa Hospital, to participate. 'Once under anesthetic, patients were randomly selected to receive either hypovolemic phlebotomy, to decrease blood transfusions, or to receive usual care,' explains Dr. Martel.
CBC
23-06-2025
- Health
- CBC
For long COVID sufferers, a beacon of hope closes its doors
People who continue to suffer the effects of COVID-19 long after contracting the illness say they're concerned to be losing a major resource in eastern Ontario. The Ottawa Hospital's outpatient post-COVID rehabilitation program opened in July 2021. According to the hospital, it helped treat more than 160 patients before shutting its doors in May. Dennis Murphy, who spent nearly two years on the hospital's waitlist, called the closure frustrating. He contracted COVID-19 in June 2023, and has been experiencing lingering symptoms including brain fog and fatigue ever since. The Kingston, Ont., resident was first referred to The Ottawa Hospital program in August 2023, but was still waiting for treatment when the hospital announced the program was ending. "This [disease] has had a very serious impact on my life," said Murphy, who recognized others have suffered through worse. "I've been able to continue working, I'm continually able to enjoy many things, if at a lesser level. That is not the case with a lot of people." For Murphy, it's been the little things that most people take for granted, like taking his kids to the beach. "I'm really hoping that I can do that this summer, but I realize that if I choose to, I will probably will not be able to do much the next day," he said. When CBC visited Murphy's home, he grew tired after gardening for a short time. "It's difficult psychologically ... when you really want to do something and be out and active. It limits my ability to do things that I like to do," he said. Susan Whitton was more fortunate. She contracted COVID in January 2023 and was accepted into the rehabilitation program the following January. She said it was invaluable, and she fears for others who won't get the same chance. "It kind of feels like they've been abandoned. They've been sort of left on their own," she said. "If I caught COVID now and there was no support, there was nowhere to turn, you were trying to solve this on your own — I don't know what people are doing now." She said she's still recovering, more than two years after first contracting the illness. "I may look better on the outside, and for my job I pretend that everything is fine and everything is wonderful. But it's not. It's a struggle every day," she said. In a statement, The Ottawa Hospital said the clinic supported more than 160 patients with long COVID-19 symptoms since its launch. "In alignment with other centres across Ontario, The Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre (TOHRC) made the difficult decision to close the program," the hospital wrote in a statement to CBC. "Care teams at TOHRC are working to provide alternative resources, including educational materials and peer support options, to help patients continue managing their recovery." But Murphy questions that decision. He called the program's record "woefully inadequate," given the number of long COVID sufferers who are still seeking treatment. Ontario's Ministry of Health said in a statement that it released guidelines to diagnose, assess and manage patients with long COVID, and provided a resource page on the illness. It did not point to any similar rehabilitation programs available to patients in eastern Ontario. In December 2023, Statistics Canada reported that about 3.5 million Canadian adults reported experiencing long-term symptoms from COVID-19, and nearly 80 per cent experienced symptoms lasting six months or more. Only three provinces have extended funding for long COVID treatment, according to Dr. Angela Cheung, a professor of medicine and a senior physician scientist at the University Health Network, University of Toronto. (Cheung has no connection to The Ottawa Hospital's post-COVID rehabilitation program). She said there's still much that's unknown about long COVID. "It's kind of like HIV in the early days. We are making progress, but science does take time," she said. "We do sort of need to give it a little bit more time, so we see results from trials." For patients in eastern Ontario, that doesn't provide much comfort.
CTV News
14-06-2025
- Health
- CTV News
‘A landmark decision': advocates celebrate reform of health screening task force
Women in their 40s in Ontario can now book a mammogram without needing a doctor's referral. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Kimberly P. Mitchell/Detroit Free Press via AP) Advocates and doctors are applauding the recently released external expert panel report on the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which calls for modernization and reform of the task force. Some of the recommendations to modernize the task force include ensuring preventive health care remains up to date with evolving scientific data and applying it to guidelines in a timely manner, the inclusion of equity-centred perspectives, patient involvement, and collaboration with pre-existing guidelines to help eliminate disparities across the country. 'This is great news,' said Dr. Anna Wilkinson, a family physician and general practitioner-oncologist at The Ottawa Hospital, in a phone interview with 'They are saying that we need to modernize the task force, and I think that's because we're recognizing that we are kind of behind the times on our cancer screening guidelines and many of our other preventive health care guidelines.' Task force halted amid criticism The task force, which is responsible for developing preventive health guidelines like cancer screening across Canada, is an independent body that develops clinical guidelines for family doctors about screening and prevention measures for cancer and other diseases. The task force's work was halted last year following criticism of its proposed incoming breast cancer screening guidelines, which did not recommend mammography screening begin at age 40. Instead, it upheld its 2018 guidelines recommending screening begin at age 50, despite growing evidence and calls from numerous medical experts and organizations urging earlier screening in response to rising breast cancer rates among younger women. This prompted then-Health Minister Mark Holland to request that the Public Health Agency launch an external expert review panel, which began in October 2024, to recommend changes and improvements to the task force's structure, governance, and methodology for developing the guidelines. Dr. Wilkinson, one of the medical experts who advised the external review panel, says she is pleased the report acknowledges the need to modernize the task force. 'We cannot afford economically as a health system to not be,' she said. 'We know that it's so much cheaper to deal with cancers when they're smaller, we know the outcomes are better, the cost to our health-care system is better.' 'I think one of the ways forward for a health-care system is to do preventive care more effectively. (…) This is a high-level view of how we might do that, so I look forward to seeing how it gets implemented.' With implementation of the recommendations currently underway, Health Minister Marjorie Michel has requested that the Public Health Agency of Canada have the task force operational by April 2026. 'Landmark change' Kimberly Carson, CEO of Breast Cancer Canada, was one of many advocates calling for the incoming breast cancer guidelines to recommend screening begin at age 40 rather than 50. Carson, who met with Holland and the external expert review panel, is content with the report's findings. 'It's going to be fantastic for Canadians,' Carson told in a phone interview. 'We know that if we catch breast cancer early, it's better for the patient, it's better for the health-care system, it costs less, there's less financial toxicity for the patients and a better cure rate. (…) It changes the paradigm for Canadian patients.' The task force began meeting on the upcoming breast cancer guidelines in May 2023. For two years, Breast Cancer Canada advocated for the inclusion of subject matter experts in guideline development, the timely integration of the latest data, and the incorporation of patient perspectives. With the report acknowledging all these points, Carson says she is satisfied that the sustained mobilization efforts have yielded results. 'It's such a landmark change in a landmark decision,' Carson said. The Canadian Cancer Society, which also stated in a media release its approval of the report, also had its recommendations reflected in the findings. Some of these recommendations echo those of Breast Cancer Canada, including the inclusion of cancer experts, patient perspectives, and staying current with evolving perspectives, experiences and scientific evidence. 'Once they reform the task force and it becomes functional in April, we would hope that they would immediately take a look at the screening guidelines for breast cancer,' Carson added. In addition to the 2018 breast cancer guidelines, the current cancer screening guidelines for other cancers — like colon cancer (2016), prostate cancer (2014), and cervical cancer (2013) — are also due for updates, Dr. Wilkinson notes. She says this report is a 'critical step' towards modernizing all of Canada's screening guidelines. 'In today's strained health-care environment, optimizing preventive care is essential to making the most of our limited resources,' she said in an email to 'The integration of diverse and evolving evidence, equitable care and ongoing evaluation pave the way for agile, 'living' guidelines that keep pace with scientific advancements. 'This approach will help ensure Canada no longer relies on cancer screening recommendations that are over a decade old.'
CTV News
21-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Meet the group who raised $2M for Parkinson's research through Ottawa Race Weekend
Partners Investing in Parkinson's Research (PIPR) at Ottawa Race Weekend 2024. Since 2009, the group has raised over $2 million for The Ottawa Hospital. (PIPR/Provided)
CBC
12-05-2025
- General
- CBC
Royal birth at Ottawa hospital celebrated with tulips 80 years after liberation of Netherlands
It's a story that's become part of the lore of the City of Ottawa. During the Second World War, members of the Dutch royal family were given safe haven in Canada to escape the Nazi occupation of their country. On Jan. 19, 1943, Princess Margriet was born at what was then the Ottawa Civic Hospital to Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. "It was a ray of light in the midst of war. Everybody in the Netherlands knew about it, from the secret radio [transmissions]," said Margriet Vonno, ambassador to Canada from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. A government proclamation declared the maternity ward of the Civic temporarily extraterritorial, which meant the new princess could be born a Dutch citizen despite entering the world on Canadian soil. "It was a bleak time. [Dutch] people were hungry, they were beaten," said Vonno. "And then there was a new princess being born, and the idea that the royal family could return — that we could return to normal." At the Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital on Monday, the ambassador handed out bouquets of tulips to hospital staff. More flowers were sent inside to be shared with patients. The gesture was meant as a thank you for keeping the Dutch royal family's legacy alive, more than 80 years after the princess was born at the hospital. It was also an opportunity for The Ottawa Hospital to demonstrate how the royal birth story will be preserved when it moves to a gleaming new facility that's currently under construction just down Carling Avenue. "That legacy of Princess Margriet and Queen Juliana is part of the history of this organization," said Ottawa Hospital president and CEO Cameron Love. Love said it's a story the hospital is determined to keep telling after it moves to the new facility, slated to open in 2028. "We're still in the process of determining how best to commemorate that legacy," he said. "It's too early to say exactly how that's going to be structured." This year marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, and for many Dutch people it's a part of their family stories. "My parents were liberated by Canadian soldiers," said Vonno. "My father was four years old. He got his first bar of chocolate from a Canadian soldier." Vonno said Princess Margriet had intended to be in Ottawa to mark the occasion, but a skating mishap prevented her from coming. "Unfortunately, Her Royal Highness couldn't come because she fell while skating," said Vonno, explaining the 82-year-old royal was skating 10 kilometres to raise money for leukemia research when it occurred. "She skated for nine kilometres, 400 meters, and then she fell," said Vonno. Even with an injured arm, the princess wanted to make the trip to Canada, but doctors advised against it, according to Vonno. "It's a very cool princess that we're having," she said admiringly. Vonno said the trip is merely postponed, not cancelled.
