Most commonly your first visit to a radiotherapy department will be for a planning CT scan.

Cancer Care Institute has a wide bore General Electric state of the art CT simulation scanner, allowing the physicians and staff to be able to visualize the target area and surrounding organs in 3 dimensional space. This also allows our most advanced treatment planning system to make over 1 trillion calculations to create the most precise radiation dose plans using the CT scan obtained. This wide bore CT allows us to scan the patient in the actual treatment position, allowing for highly reproducible treatments.

When you first arrive at the radiotherapy department, you will need to check in at reception and wait for a radiographer to come and find you and explain exactly what will be happening during your appointment. Most (if not all) patients are very nervous and anxious. This is completely normal, and one of the roles of a therapeutic radiographer is to help and guide you though the process and reduce your anxieties.

The therapy radiographers will draw on your skin with felt pen. They will then use these marks to take measurements and plan your radiotherapy treatment. These pen marks will wash off when you have a bath or shower and this is not a problem as long as you do not scrub at the area and make it sore. When the radiographers are ready they will leave the room and go to the control area to operate the scanner, they will be watching you at all times, so raise your hand if you need them to re-enter the room in an emergency to assist you. Patients often ask "If it is so safe why do the radiographers leave the room for each scan?" The honest answer is it is safe to have the scans. The radiographers would be exposed to a repeated dose of radiation over the course of a year, which can be harmful.

During your CT scan the couch moves in and out of the 'polo hole' shaped part of the Machine. Nothing will touch or hurt you, and you will not feel anything. When the scan has finished the radiographers will come back into the room. As the pen marks drawn on your skin will wash away, they need to give you some small permanent dots so you can be placed in the correct position each day when you attend for your radiotherapy treatment. These dots are permanent tattoos, but they are only the size of a small pen dot, and therefore are most likely to be confused for a freckle or hair follicle by any non-medical professional.

Before you leave the radiotherapy department you will be given your treatment start date and time. This can be several weeks after your CT planning scan, to allow for the computer planning process to be completed. This takes place without the need for you to be present in the department, and the complexity of the plan required will determine the time span between CT scan and start of treatment. Please inform the radiographers at your CT scanning appointment if you have any specific time preferences for your radiotherapy treatment appointments, as the treatment machines are normally very busy.