From the March 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


The challenge for pediatrics is more complex with children having special equipment needs and requiring the presence of child life specialists and social workers.

The administration of proton therapy requires patients to remain still, and although innovations such as pencil beam scanning have greatly reduced the length of an actual proton treatment, getting an anxious child to remain motionless can be a challenge.


One possible solution is the presence of anesthesia equipment.

“No patient can move during treatment, and it’s easier to tell that to an adult than a kid,” Abram Gordon, executive director of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Pediatric Proton Center, told HCB News. “Sometimes, they need to be put to sleep so they don’t move. The list of services they need is kind of long and not every proton therapy center is geared to providing those needs.”

Further technological needs, according to Klein, include a dedicated H&N couch to accommodate all child sizes; a gantry rolling floor to ensure patient and staff safety; and specially designed nozzle accessories to enhance beam performance and reduce delivery time for use against shallow tumors, a common occurrence in pediatric cancer patients.

IBA has partnered with Philips to provide the Ambient Experience for their proton therapy systems, which aims to diminish patient anxiety by making the treatment environment less intimidating.

“It offers 10 different ambient themes, using colored lighting, sound and wall projections,” Klein says. “This provides a friendly soft, non-threatening environment and greatly improves the patient experience.”

In addition to that, she says the Ambient Experience has also allowed some proton facilities to reduce the use of anesthesia in pediatric patients by as much as 30 percent.

But the needs of child patients extend beyond just the technology, requiring the presence of child life specialists who can explain the treatment and procedures on a level that children can comprehend.

To assist in this matter, many vendors and providers are engaging in creative innovations to help children feel more comfortable in their environment. Varian, for instance, has created a comic book that helps children view proton therapy as an actual superhero.

“One of the things we’ve recently done as a vendor is introduce a new comic book hero, Proton Man, that actually is directed at teaching both parents and kids about proton therapy,” says Hansen. “We’re using a comic book to literally tell them the story of a child going through it and the superhero being protons that are going to save the day.”

March 2018 Magazine

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