The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver, Friday June 1, 2007 - 3 move your mindTM When Budds' throws a party, you don't want to miss it. June 6-9. Budds' SAAB cordially invites you and a guest to our 30th Anniversary Celebration June 5th, 6-8pm Plus, please join us for a week full of great Customer Events. Photo by Peterbrand.ca The JL Racing Team will be at Budds' All Week BOOK EARLY! Please R.S.V.P. at 866-973-SAAB or e-mail events@buddssaab.ca If you drive a SAAB... LIESA KORTMANN/ OAKVILLE BEAVER · Book now for your Free Saab inspection during our SAAB Owner's Clinic, June 6th - 9th. A free SAAB gift bag is our thank-you gift. · Easily our most popular event, the clinic fills up fast. Call 866-965-7222 to book your spot today. · $1500 Loyalty coupons will be available for all SAAB customers attending. PRIVATE CLINIC: Dr. Doug Bair, Dr. Joe Pham, and Dr. Naveen Arya at the grand opening of their privatelyrun Oakville Endoscopy Center . If you don't (yet)... · · · · · Meet SAAB Factory representatives Wednesday through Saturday. Take the SAAB Test Drive Experience. See the 2007 Special Anniversary Edition of the 93's. Pop in for our great lunch BBQ all week long. Special Anniversary sales and service offers all week. Business booming at private endoscopy centre By Andrew Fruch SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER With colon cancer being the second highest mortality causing cancer, more people are deciding to take preventive measures such as premature screening. But with the average hospital waiting list at around 15 months, valuable time that could be life saving is lost. To address this problem and alleviate some of the stress on the medical system, three doctors from Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital (OTMH) have opened a private endoscopy clinic. The Oakville Endoscopy Center (OEC) is located at 690 Dorval Dr. It is an ultramodern facility, where for a fee of $50, patients can receive colonoscopies, the most effective colon cancer screening process, in only four months. "We were becoming inundated with people (at OTMH) who needed screening, but are very healthy people otherwise," said Dr. Douglas Bair, one of three doctors who partnered to open the clinic. "The waiting list was just getting longer and longer and longer and the hospital resources to deal with those people, where in essence, cramped. That is why we came up with the idea of opening up the clinic really, to try and meet the clinical need, which is overwhelming in all honesty." The clinic celebrated its grand opening this week, although it opened its doors in July 2006. Since then a steady stream of patients, totalling 2,088 have taken advantage of the services offered at the clinic. "The day we opened, we probably started off with a month already in," said Dr. Naveen Arya, who is also a partner. "And it's just growing astronomically. We're looking at opening a second room if we do have available physicians." Although located in Oakville, patients typically come from anywhere ranging from Etobicoke to Hamilton, with most coming from the Halton area, such as Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Georgetown. According to the doctors, there have even been a few patients from northern areas of Ontario. The OEC is the only clinic of its type in the area, and shares the same standards as any hospital. In order to establish the OEC, Doctors Bair and Arya, along with Dr. Joe Pham, invested more than half a million dollars. The goal of the doctors was to establish a comfortable, high-quality and accessible clinic. The OEC is fully staffed with six doctors available to perform screenings, along with nine part-time nurses, three support staff and two dedicated scope cleaning staff. The doctors have removed a total of 912 polyps from patients, 328 of those being precancerous, and have found 11 active cancers. "I feel that we've actually done a lot," said Pham."If you look at how many cancers we found, how many large polyps or precancerous polyps we removed. I feel we've made an impact. But it's been a lot of hard work." With the shorter waiting times, lives are being saved for some patients who show no symptoms of illness but are being affected by cancer that would be diagnosed too late if they waited for a screening to be performed at a hospital. "In many of those cases if they (patients) waited the standard 15 months, they would have a no longer treatable cancer," said Dr. Bair. "So one in 200 people coming through those doors had a cancer even though they did not have a single symptom ahead of time. That's kind of a frightening fact." In Ontario, colon cancer rates are some of the highest in the world. It is estimated that in the province, one in 17 residents will fall victim to colon cancer if they are not regularly screened for it. Approximately only 30 percent of Ontario residents are screened regularly for colon cancer. The demand for the OEC is undeniable, and it is expected that another 3,300 patients will visit the clinic within the coming year. It has required a lot of work on the part of the doctors to operate the OEC, and will continue to require hard work, but there is nothing else they would rather be doing. "It's been busy, and we never anticipated this level. We knew it would be busy, we just didn't know how busy. It's made it a little more time consuming, but at the end of the day, you feel good about what you do." Phone: 866-973-SAAB www.buddssaab.ca 2400 South Service Road, W. Oakville Monday - Thursday 9am - 8:30pm · Friday 9am - 6pm · Saturday 9am - 5pm McDonald's and Oak-Land Ford Lincoln Registration Now Open 905-845-2571, Oakville ord Lincoln