Lighting the way to more efficient treatment

Markham Stouffville Hospital's new GreenLight Laser is reducing hospital stays and wait times for prostate surgeries.

In a darkened operating room, Dr. Adeel Sheikh, a urologist at Oak Valley Health’s Markham Stouffville Hospital (MSH), dons purple-tinted goggles, as do the rest of the medical professionals who surround him. Dr. Sheikh is handed a surgical instrument—a long, slim tube attached to a machine, which a nurse turns on—and it lights up neon green, casting the room in a futuristic glow.

It’s the first time Dr. Sheikh and his team are using the hospital’s new GreenLight Laser, and they’re about to make the life of Bradley Steele, a 59-year-old Markham resident and risk insurance specialist, a whole lot easier.

Like many men in their late 50s, by the time Steele had been experiencing some discomfort—and by the time he realized his prostate was the source, he was feeling the reverberations in all aspects of his life.

“You don’t notice it because it’s happening every day and ramping up very slowly,” he notes. “Then all of a sudden, you’re going, ‘Wait a second, I’m getting up every hour-and-a-half to go to the bathroom! What’s going on here?’”

In some ways, it’s like the story of the frog in water: place a frog in a pot of water and slowly turn up the heat until it boils. The frog won’t realize anything is wrong until it’s too late.

FAR-REACHING EFFECTS