Clinicians at a leading cancer center in India have become the first in the country to commence advanced lung, liver and brain radiotherapy treatments using an upgraded Clinac® medical linear accelerator from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR). The accelerator has been enhanced with High Intensity Mode dose delivery capability, which is allowing doctors at Yashoda Cancer Institute to shorten treatment times and deliver stereotactic body radiotherapy and stereotactic radiosurgery for hard to treat tumors.
Stereotactic body radiotherapy and stereotactic radiosurgery involve delivering the total dose in fewer treatment sessions, with a greater portion of the dose delivered each session. This means conventional treatment times of five to six weeks can be reduced to just a few days. At Yashoda, stereotactic treatments are used for lung, liver, spinal and cranial treatments.
"We are a high volume center treating up to 20 stereotactic radiosurgery patients each month and by using the new High Intensity Mode we are able to treat these patients in a conventional treatment slot of about 15 minutes," says Dr. G. S. Rao, managing director of Yashoda Cancer Institute. "This is really pretty amazing and would have been unheard of a few years ago."
Dr. Rao said the High Intensity Mode has an especially important role to play for elderly lung cancer patients who are considered inoperable, offering them an alternative to surgery. The patients also benefit, he says, from their total dose being delivered in fewer treatment sessions. "This greatly reduces the number of times the patient needs to visit the hospital meaning they can get back to their normal routine in a much shorter time," said Dr. Rao.
Yashoda combines the higher delivery doses offered by the High Intensity Mode upgrade with image-guided RapidArc® radiotherapy, which the hospital began delivering in 2008, making it the first in Asia to do so. With RapidArc, the machine quickly delivers the treatment while continuously rotating around the patient, and the beam is constantly shaped and reshaped during the rotation to match the shape and size of the tumor.
Yashoda Cancer Institute hosted a seminar on High Intensity Mode Radiosurgery at the Hyatt Park Hotel in Hyderabad yesterday. Clinicians from across Asia attended the event to share experiences and hear from some the leading exponents in radiosurgery from across the world. The inauguration ceremony was headed by the Honorable First Chief Minister of Telangana State, Sri K. Chandrasekhar Rao Garu.
"Varian is the world leader in radiotherapy and radiosurgery technology and we have pioneered high intensity dose delivery for our family of medical linear accelerators, enabling clinicians to deliver up to 2400 monitor units of radiation per minute when appropriate," says Ashok Kakkar, Varian's senior managing director in India. "That delivery speed is unmatched in the industry. Treating patients with high intensity beams requires careful and precise patient setup and monitoring, which is aided by our robotically controlled image guidance solution."
"Around the world, as at Yashoda Institute, these advanced capabilities are enabling fast and precise treatments for a range of indications, particularly lung and liver cancer that have traditionally been difficult to treat curatively with traditional radiotherapy."
He said thousands of installed Varian Clinac linear accelerators are potential candidates for upgrades with High Intensity Mode technology and the clinical advantages this technology brings.
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