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Major IT outage - update

The Christie suffered an IT outage on Wednesday 27 March which affected most clinical services areas and means our clinicians have been unable to access some patient records and test results. This has also affected our network systems. It has been confirmed that this is not a cyber-attack.

The Christie Hotline (0161 446 3658) and switchboard (0161 446 3000) are working so patients can contact us as normal in this way.

We are working with our software provider engineers and systems should be resolved overnight, however this outage has caused delays in seeing and treating patients and some deferrals and cancellations. Our priority is providing safe care to all our patients and we apologise for any delays that may occur as a result of this incident.

Patients are reminded when they attend for their appointment to bring with them information about the treatment they are on, past medical history and medications which will help our staff if any systems are still intermittent on Thursday 28 March.

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Deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH)

Deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH) is a technique that can be used to treat cancer in the breast, chest wall or occasionally the abdomen.

During DIBH, you take a deep breath during your treatment and hold it while the radiotherapy is delivered. Holding your breath fills your lungs with air and creates a larger space between your heart and the radiotherapy. This means there is less chance of damage to your heart and lungs.

As everyone's bodies are different shapes and sizes, we won’t know if you need to use DIBH until you have had your first planning CT scan. For some people, even when breathing normally, their heart will not be in the radiotherapy field. If you are one of these people, you won't need to use DIBH.

If you do need to use DIBH, we will only deliver treatment when you are ready and in control of the DIBH process. When you take a breath, the treatment automatically pauses. It will only resume when you are ready.

Last updated: March 2023