Radiotherapy Technology Designed to Improve the Precision and Speed of Cancer Treatments

Clinicians from the first two European hospitals to start clinical treatments using the new TrueBeam system, developed by from Varian Medical Systems (Palo Alto, CA, USA)--Zurich University Hospital (Switzerland) and VU University Medical Center (Amsterdam, Netherlands)--addressed an Emerging Technologies Symposium at the annual European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO) conference September 14, 2010, in Barcelona, Spain, to give detailed accounts of early patient treatments.

Prof. Urs Luetolf of Zurich University Hospital, said, "When we introduce new technology it is always interesting for our fellow radiation oncologists and radiation therapists to hear about clinical process improvements for treatment delivery and imaging which enables us to handle organ and tumor motion, but clinical medicine has one main goal--to add something for patient. We have treated more than 100 patients on the TrueBeam system since we introduced it six months ago and, although it's too early to assess outcomes, it's clear the system offers advantages in terms of the speed and precision of delivery. Cancer patients constantly seek a better cure and fewer side effects and they want to be treated using the latest and most advanced technology, and our experiences with this advanced system to date have been encouraging for patients as well as making the treatment process more straightforward for clinicians."

During a presentation on emerging clinical applications in radiosurgery, Dr. John Adler, Varian's chief of new clinical applications, spoke about the use of hypofractionation for a range of cancers as well as other lesions, tumors, and conditions where radiosurgery may be indicated.

Designed to advance the treatment of lung, breast, prostate, head and neck, and other types of cancer, Varian's TrueBeam platform for image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery as introduced in April 2010 as the first fully integrated system designed from the ground up to treat a moving target with unprecedented speed and accuracy.

Applicable for all forms of advanced external-beam radiotherapy including image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery (IGRT and IGRS), intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) and RapidArc radiotherapy, TrueBeam can deliver treatments with a dose delivery rate of up to 2,400 monitor units per minute, double the maximum output of conventional systems. This makes it possible to offer greater patient comfort by shortening treatments, and to improve precision by leaving less time for tumor motion during dose delivery.

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