BUFFALO, N.Y. — Western New York now has a new weapon in the fight against cancer. Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center's new mobile lung cancer screening unit is the first of its kind of New York State, aimed at helping to fight, detect, and even prevent the disease.
"Eddy" stands for "Early Dectection Driven to You," and it has a state-of-the-art low-dose computed technology (CT) scanner, similar to those you'd find in a hospital or a radiology center.
"It's built for the three-minute scan that it takes to screen for lung cancer," Mary Reid, PhD, MSPH, Roswell's Chief of Cancer Screening, Survivorship and Mentorship said. "If we can screen, we can pick it up early and people can live a really long time."
Dr. Reid says Roswell wanted to launch Eddy to combat low screening rates for lung cancer, which in New York State is only 6% of eligible people, versus rates of 60-80% for breast, cervical, and colon cancers. It will travel to neighborhoods in the City of Buffalo, as rural counties and eventually expand its routes throughout the state.
"We think and we know this from our mammography, that if you drive to a convenient place and people can just walk on board in their neighborhood, they're going to get screened more often," she said. "That's what we want, because we really want people people to live from lung cancer."
For more information, or to schedule a screening on Eddy, and find out when it will be in your town, check out their website here: www.roswellpark.org/eddy.