Cedar Valley ASCENT, a Waterloo, Iowa-based health care provider, is opening a new clinic in Dubuque offering a local option for non-invasive skin cancer treatments.
The company plans to invest $1.5 million into the clinic over the next five years.
The clinic, located at 3315 John F. Kennedy Road, is expected to open on Wednesday, June 11, and offer services including superficial radiation therapy and hearing treatment.
Superficial radiation therapy, or SRT, is used for treating non-melanoma skin cancers, which begin in the basal skin cells and develop after years of exposure to the sun.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, roughly one in five Americans develop skin cancer by the time they reach 70.
SRT does not treat melanoma skin cancer, which is the most aggressive form of skin cancer.
Marissa Meade, Cedar Valley ASCENT’s lead radiation therapist, said that during treatment, the clinic will first identify the problematic area and then use low-dose radiation in the upper layer of the skin to treat the cancer.
She said patients will receive on average 20 to 25 sessions of the therapy.
The treatment, Meade said, provides patients an alternative to surgery or chemotherapy, which depends on the person’s age, severity of cancer and general health. She said the radiation is painless and the sessions are completed within minutes.
“Usually they don’t even know we’re doing anything in the area, because it is superficial,” Meade said.
The Dubuque clinic is one of seven ASCENT clinics across northeast Iowa. One SRT machine will be housed in the clinic, operated by Radiation Therapist Jenna Krahmer.
Carmon Halligan, ASCENT’s director of clinical operations, said the clinic will begin accepting patients after its June 11 soft opening.
The clinic will then be open every other Wednesday until an open house in August for the public.
The new clinic will be able to accommodate about 20 to 30 patients each day, Halligan said.
“We’re pretty excited to see what it does for the community,” she said.
Meade said ASCENT has continued to grow as people learn about SRT. She said the team will often speak at community events to educate people about the risk of skin cancer, which in 90% of non-melanoma cases is due to prolonged sun exposure, according to the EPA.
Over the lpast three years, ASCENT has expanded to Independence, Waverly, Grundy Center and Hiawatha in Iowa.
“People are going in and getting things looked at that maybe they wouldn’t have necessarily thought of before,” Meade said. “They’re taking those steps to take care of their skin and make sure that things are taken care of earlier on.”