Treating Brain Tumors with RapidArc® Radiosurgery
John Fiveash, MD, and Evan Thomas, PhD (pending) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham presented on RapidArc® radiosurgery in the treatment of brain cancer. Thomas demonstrated how RapidArc radiosurgery can enable clinicians to treat multiple brain metastases in a single treatment session.2

"These are accurate, high quality treatments that accommodate a neurosurgeon's busy schedule," said Fiveash. "RapidArc radiosurgery treatments are more comfortable for the patients because they're fast.3 Most are done in about half an hour; a similar Gamma Knife® treatment can take over two hours. At our institution, we've seen the number of Gamma Knife radiosurgery procedures decline steadily since 2007, while the number of RapidArc radiosurgery treatments has grown." Thomas noted that RapidArc radiosurgery treatment plans, when properly optimized, can be clinically equivalent to similar Gamma Knife plans in terms of tumor coverage and the amount of background dose falling outside the targeted area.4
Treating Lung Cancer
Billy W. Loo, Jr., MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiation oncology at Stanford University, focused on methods for using RapidArc radiosurgery, real-time image guidance, and respiratory gating to compensate for tumor motion during SABR treatments for lung cancer. Loo described his pioneering work with "triggered imaging," a capability of Varian's TrueBeam™ system that makes it possible to use imaging throughout a treatment session at specific points in the patient's respiratory cycle to verify that the treatment remains on target.5,6

Andrea McKee, MD, chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Massachusetts, outlined a lung cancer screening program that she helped to establish in early 2012.7 "Since then, over 2,000 people at high risk for developing lung cancer have received lung screening as a community benefit," she said. "It's important to catch lung cancer early, because early-stage patients who are medically inoperable have a better prognosis with radiosurgery than people whose cancer is first detected after it has spread."

Treating Prostate Cancer
Constantine Mantz, M.D., radiation oncologist with 21st Century Oncology in Fort Myers, Florida, discussed his use of the Calypso® real-time tumor tracking system during radiosurgery treatment for localized prostate cancer. He reported outcomes, in terms of reductions in patients' prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels, comparable to men treated with brachytherapy.8

More HCB News