Radiosurgical Technology Reduces Number of Treatment Sessions and Takes Better Advantage of Motion

More than 500 oncology professionals at a European radiotherapy and oncology congress recently heard about cutting-edge treatments using high dose rate capability of sophisticated radiosurgery technology.

European cancer experts have reported their progress with promising new radiosurgical techniques for treating cancer and other conditions using new linear accelerator technology from Varian Medical Systems (Palo Alto, CA, USA). Speakers at Varian’s Emerging Technologies Symposium at the annual European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology congress (ESTRO) conference, held May 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, detailed their experiences with fast hypofractionated treatments for prostate patients and RapidArc radiosurgery for intracranial and central nervous system indications.

Dr. Filippo Alongi, a radiation oncologist from Humanitas Cancer Center (Rozzano-Milan, Italy; www.cancercenter.it), reported that he has used hypofractionation to reduce the number of treatment sessions for prostate cancer from 30 to as few as 5. The center is equipped with Varian’s TrueBeam system for radiotherapy and radiosurgery.

“Our work at Humanitas is demonstrating that hypofractionation with TrueBeam is a precise and fast option for prostate cancer patients,” said Dr. Alongi. “Each treatment is delivered in under five minutes and this compares very favorably against dedicated radiosurgical tools, which can take 45 minutes per treatment session. We are giving the same dose with the same quality in a fraction of that time, and enabling patients to spend much less time on the treatment table.”

Dr. Ufuk Abacioglu of Neolife Medical Center (Istanbul, Turkey presented findings on the use of frameless, singe-fraction RapidArc radiosurgery for intracranial and central nervous system treatments, including malignant and benign tumors, vascular abnormalities and functional disorders.

“Frameless, noninvasive localization of the target with image-guidance has made it possible for us to treat larger disease sites in fewer sessions while avoiding the invasive procedure of attaching a frame to the patient’s skull,” said Dr. Abacioglu. “Using TrueBeam’s ultrafast high intensity mode, image-guided radiosurgery can be completed in a standard 15-minute treatment slot rather than in conventional radiosurgery sessions that are typically two to five times longer. We are pleased with the clinical experience and patient response.”

Prof. Carlo Greco from the University of Pisa (Italy), described his clinic’s experience with real-time tracking of prostate cancer using the Varian Calypso system, which involves the use of implantable beacons to monitor motion by tracking movement in real time with sub-millimeter precision.

“Calypso enabled us to detect and measure motion during treatments so that we could plan to deliver doses within tighter margins around the disease site in order to reduce toxicity and complications in surrounding healthy tissue,” said Prof. Greco. “Prostate motion occurs even during very short RapidArc treatments and detecting and correcting for this is of paramount importance when adopting hypo-fractionated schedules that involve delivering higher doses within each treatment session.”

The Varian’s Emerging Technologies Symposium was chaired and moderated by Prof. Ben Slotman, head of radiation oncology at VU University Medical Center (Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

Related Links:
Varian Medical Systems
University of Pisa
VU University Medical Center