Targeted radiosurgery: a cancer treatment in 15 minutes?

Targeted radiosurgery: a cancer treatment in 15 minutes?

27/3/2014

A new cancer treatment (available in the US & Portugal) based on radiosurgery performs cancer surgery within 15 minutes, without the incision or hospital stay. Following each treatment, patients can return to their everyday lives.

The Edge™ Radiosurgery Suite is designed to perform advanced, non-invasive cancer procedures anywhere in the body (including the brain, spine, head and neck, adrenal gland, lung, liver and pancreas) with extreme precision and low toxicity. The Edge, created by Varian Medical Systems, uses new real-time tumor tracking technology and motion management capabilities, improving both safety and comfort for patients by protecting healthy tissue with sub-millimeter-accuracy. And its "cutting edge" beam offers the agility to treat tumors that may be difficult to reach surgically.

It is available at the Josephine Ford Cancer Institute at Henry Ford Hospital, and the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal.

Treatments are typically outpatient and completed within the same week - with only one to five sessions.

As of now, the Edge offers patients:

• Faster treatment: With a dose rate of up to 2,400 monitor units per minute, it offers rapid "stereotactic" treatments in only 10-20 minutes compared to other systems that can take well over an hour per session.
• Increased comfort: The treatment couch offers six degrees of freedom and provides the accuracy, precision and flexibility needed to optimally position and adjust patients, allowing them to be comfortable and breathe freely during treatment.
• Real-time imaging: An advanced motion management package makes it possible to better compensate for tumor motion during treatment.
• Cost-effective medicine: The Edge can accurately treat the vast majority of what a proton beam center can do at a fraction of the cost of a proton unit.

"In radiosurgery, millimeters matter," says neurosurgeon Steven N. Kalkanis, M.D., director of the Center for Cancer Surgery at Henry Ford. "The Edge radiosurgery suite is calibrated for sub-millimeter accuracy. That will help us rest assured that we are doing everything possible to protect normal tissues."

What is Stereotactic Radiation?

Stereotactic radiation is a procedure that precisely delivers intense radiation doses to tumor targets in one to five treatments. The goal of this non-invasive procedure is to destroy, or make inactive, the tumor while minimizing dose exposure to the surrounding healthy tissue.

 

 

Source: Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111514.htm