HYDERABAD, India, July 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- A 65-year-old man with inoperable lung cancer has become the first lung cancer patient in India to receive stereotactic radiosurgery, a promising new approach for treating this disease. Doctors at Yashoda Hospital in Hyderabad were able to deliver the treatment using RapidArc technology from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR).

Several recent studies* have shown that lung cancer responds favorably to radiosurgery, which involves delivering the full dose in as little as one to five treatments. With the Varian RapidArc technology each radiosurgery session could be performed in just ten minutes, including patient setup and imaging, with the actual 'beam-on' time being as little as three minutes.

"Shorter treatment times mean the patient has to spend less time on the treatment machine and is better able to maintain a regular breathing pattern, which is important in lung treatments," said Dr. G.S. Rao, executive director at Yashoda Hospital. "Shorter treatment times and fewer treatment sessions compare favorably with the previous approach for non-operable lung patients, which would have required conventional radiotherapy techniques delivered over 25 to 30 sessions at more than 30 minutes per session. Now, instead of five to six weeks the patient's treatment can be completed in just nine days."
The 65-year-old patient was diagnosed with non small cell lung cancer, with a 2.5 cm tumor in the right middle lobe, which meant the tumor moved extensively during breathing. With the gated 4D-PET/CT planning and shorter treatment times made possible by RapidArc, the patient was able to cope better with active breathing control during treatment. Since this first treatment, Yashoda has used RapidArc radiosurgery with a second lung cancer patient and two pancreatic cancer patients.

RapidArc quickly delivers a complete volumetric treatment in a single or multiple arcs of the treatment machine around the patient and makes it possible to deliver advanced image-guided, intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) two to eight times faster than is possible with conventional IMRT or helical tomotherapy. Better imaging, greater precision and faster delivery also allow clinicians to deliver the required dose in fewer treatments.

"Our next challenge is to combine RapidArc with respiratory gating, where the beam is triggered by the exact position of the tumor," said Dr. Rao. "This will come in the future and will mean that patient will no longer need to hold their breath during treatment." Varian recently added advanced motion management capabilities including gated RapidArc to its Trilogy linear accelerator platform to support this capability.

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