Canada is very peculiar. Not only do we have a shortage of technicians, but except for Quebec, positron emission tomography has not been deployed.
As mentioned, many of us went to the European meeting last week in Barcelona. The two major topics of the conference were positron emission tomography and therapy with radioisotopes.
I am originally from Belgium, and starting in 1983 positron emission tomography was part of my training in nuclear medicine. As a matter of fact, Belgium approved the use of PET scans for the diagnosis for every stage of cancer in 1990. So Canada is 20 years behind. Quebec deployed PETs a few years ago. We are paying the price for a lack of basic technology.
We're not necessarily going to see the effect of the shortage of isotopes today, but we'll see it six months, a year, two years down the road. We're certainly going to see a lot of patients with advanced cardiac disease, advanced coronary arterial disease, and advanced cancer.
I've said many times that I've never seen as many patients with advanced cancer as I've seen in Ontario over the past five years, and the reason is that we don't have the tools to make those diagnoses. The shortage of isotopes will just increase this dramatic situation across Canada.