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Major advances in radiosurgery and radiotherapy for treating cancer of the brain, breast, and spine

Talks on major advances in radiosurgery and radiotherapy for treating cancer of the brain, breast, and spine, captured the attention of more than 800 clinicians at Varian Medical Systems ' 2010 Annual Users Meeting, held recently in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology ( ASTRO ) in San Diego.  

Samuel Ryu, M.D., director of radiosurgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, reported that spine radiosurgery enabled him to reduce the tumor volume and improve neurological functioning for 80 percent of his patients with malignant epidural spinal cord compression.  Dr. Ryu referred to his recently-published study about treating metastatic lesions of the spine using a single stereotactic radiosurgery, specifically when tumors are compressing the spinal cord and causing neurological problems(1).  "Although surgery followed by radiotherapy is the standard treatment for these cases, radiosurgery appears to be a viable noninvasive treatment option," he said.  "It offers rapid pain relief and neurologic improvement, without the invasiveness and long recovery times associated with conventional surgery."  

Gated RapidArc for Breast Cancer

Varian Medical Systems ' Gated RapidArc® technology for managing respiratory motion made it possible to improve the protection of heart and lungs during treatments for cancer in the left breast, according to Luca Cozzi, PhD, head of research at the Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland.   Dr. Cozzi demonstrated that treatment plans using Gated RapidArc are generally superior to plans using conventional IMRT in these cases.  "Respiratory gating is an excellent tool for cases where respiration is the dominant source of motion during treatment," Dr. Cozzi said, citing the results of a study that his team recently published, validating the reliability and accuracy of RapidArc dose delivery(2).

TrueBeam Radiosurgery

It is possible to perform a brain radiosurgery procedure within 15 minutes using Varian's new TrueBeam™ system, according to Arno J. Mundt, MD, professor and chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, San Diego.  This type of treatment would typically take more than an hour using other systems for stereotactic radiosurgery.  "The actual 'beam on,' or treatment time, once we completed imaging, was only 61.8 seconds," Dr. Mundt said.   "We can perform these procedures very efficiently using TrueBeam to significantly reduce the time patients spend in treatment."  

Source: Varian Medical Systems