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Varian Medical Systems to supply four advanced radiotherapy treatment machines to Global Hospitals in India, one of the nation's leading private hospital groups.

Advanced cancer treatments across India will become more widely available with the order of four state-of-the-art Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) medical linear accelerators by Global Hospitals, one of the nation's leading private hospital groups. Three TrueBeam™ STx systems and a UNIQUE™ accelerator will be installed at Global Hospitals sites in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad in 2011.

"This will make some of the world's most advanced treatment capabilities accessible for cancer patients in these major Indian cities," says Dr. K. Ravindranath, chairman & managing director of Global Hospitals Group. "This country needs more radiotherapy equipment to help its cancer patients and we believe we can help relieve this situation by installing the modern and advanced devices available."

Dr. Ravindranath said Global Hospitals in Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai were selected to receive new TrueBeam STx treatment machines because of the rapidly increasing cancer incidence in these major population centers, along with the strength of the neuroscience departments in those hospitals. He said the TrueBeam STx systems, all of which are equipped with BrainLAB iPlan planning systems, will enable Global Hospitals to offer the most advanced stereotactic and hypo-fractionated image-guided radiotherapy treatments available anywhere and would be shared by the group's oncologists and neurosurgeons. TrueBeam systems are capable of delivering treatments much more quickly than any other treatment machine and this enables cancer centers in these hospitals to treat more patients. The UNIQUE accelerator, which also features Varian Medical Systems ' RapidArc ® treatment technology for fast image-guided IMRT, is bound for the Aware Global Hospital in Hyderabad.

Designed to advance the treatment of lung, breast, brain, prostate, head and neck, and other types of cancer, the TrueBeam platform for image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery was introduced by Varian in the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 as the first fully-integrated system designed from the ground up to treat a moving target with unprecedented speed and accuracy and to offer fast and precise treatments at a lower cost per treatment than conventional equipment.

UNIQUE incorporates Varian's proven technologies for reliable and consistent dose control, delivery, and beam shaping, into an elegant machine with a patient-friendly design, which is small enough to fit into almost all existing treatment bunkers.  The system is ideally equipped for treating cancers of the head and neck, breast, cervix and prostate, which make up the majority of cases in most areas of the world.

The new devices were ordered by Global Hospitals in September and installation of the first TrueBeam device in Bangalore is due to commence in January. "We are hoping to begin treatments very soon after installations and after achieving statutory approvals, as we have a growing patient population in great need of these treatments," said Dr. Ravindranath.

Michael Sandhu, head of Varian's Oncology Systems business in India, said, " Varian Medical Systems is honored to be working with Global Hospitals in an effort to make fast, precise and efficient radiotherapy treatments available to more patients."

According to estimates from the Cancer Foundation of India, India has 2 to 2.5 million cancer cases requiring treatment at any point in time and almost a million new cancer cases are diagnosed there each year.  Cancer diagnoses are expected to continue rising in India as the health care system expands and more cases are detected.  

Source: Varian Medical Systems