Equipment bid success for Cancer team

Colleagues showing new equipment for cancer teams

Congratulations to the Macmillan Head and Neck Cancer Team who were recently successful in their bid for equipment monies.

The team, comprising of Tima Amirkamali, Rebecca Akehurst, Nisha Sehra, Yasmin Stephenson-Crute and Nina Corfield, were approached at the beginning of the pandemic to be a pilot study for a new way of providing Fibre-optic Endoscopic Evaluation of the Swallow (FEES) training remotely. FEES is an instrumental assessment of swallowing used by speech and language therapists, in which a flexible nasendoscope is inserted transnasally to directly visualise the mechanism of the swallow.

The team put in a bid for monies for FEES equipment to the West Yorkshire & Harrogate (WY&H) Cancer Alliance due to the pilot study request and were successful. They received their equipment in May.

Nina Corfield, Macmillan Highly Specialist Speech & Language Therapist (Head & Neck Cancer), said:

“We were delighted to receive the FEES monies for the equipment – it means we are able to progress our service development in FEES. The team are working particularly hard to get the service up and running and I am extremely proud of them.

“The equipment will help us obtain an accurate in-depth assessment of swallow function. It means that we can provide advice, strategies and therapy to help the patient maximise their swallow potential, reducing risks (such as aspiration pneumonia) and improving quality of life.”