How a ‘pink drink’ is helping the Ottawa Hospital find and fight cancer

It might sound like something on the menu, but the “pink drink” at the Ottawa Hospital is actually a powerful cancer-fighting tool. CTV’s Shaun Vardon reports.

It may sound like something on the menu at the Ottawa Hospital cafeteria, but a compound dubbed the “pink drink” is far from a tasty thirst-quencher.

The drink is actually a precise way of identifying cancer tissue. The compound, known as 5-aminolevulinic acid, or 5-ALA, it’s not actually pink and it tastes horrible but once it is inside you, some cancers, mainly brain and spinal ones, absorb it and become fluorescent pink under a special light and microscope.

This allows surgeons to distinguish tumor tissue from healthy tissue, increasing the rate of successful tumor removal while leaving healthy tissue intact, which improves patient outcomes.

For Dr. Safrez Mohammed, a neurosurgeon at the Ottawa Hospital, it’s been a game-changer, allowing more accuracy and safety for the patient.

“It tells us where the tumor is and allows us to take out much more tumor than we would normally be able to,” he said. “It tells us where the tumor is and more importantly where the tumor isn’t. The pink drink is one of those things that allows us to give patients more hope when they perceive no hope, and that is important.”

The Ottawa Hospital has been investing big money into expanding this program, each “drink” costs upwards of $2,500 and the specially equipped microscope is almost three quarters of a million dollars.

For patients like Jody Stang, it made all the difference. He had developed a tumour in his spine, and the pink drink allowed Dr. Mohammed to remove the tumour and limit the damage that was done to the rest of his spinal cord. Currently he is cancer free.

“I must say, it was the most horrible drink that I’ve ever had in my life. But then, a few hours later, they wheeled me down to go to surgery,” Stang said.

“I was very pleased that it lit up the cancerous cells and that they were able to cut out all the tumour to ensure they got all the cancer out of my spine.”

According to the Ottawa Hospital, thanks to the pink drink’s effects, the rate of complete tumour removal has increased from about 30 per cent to as high as 70 per cent in many cases.

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