LATHAM, N.Y.-- Clinicians at Community Care Physicians of Latham, New York, have launched a novel image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) treatment for prostate cancer patients using an advanced imaging system to more precisely locate tumors at the moment of treatment. The new technology from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) combines imaging and treatment on a single machine, facilitating fast and accurate adaptive radiotherapy treatments that deliver high doses of radiation directly to cancer cells while sparing surrounding healthy tissues.

"Our new image-guidance technology from Varian takes an already precise treatment like IMRT and makes it even more accurate," said Robert Desjardins, administrative director for Community Care Physicians IGRT department. "It enables us to see the tumor at the time of treatment and to make very fine adjustments to the patient's position so that the tumor is lined up exactly with the treatment beam. This leads to better outcomes with fewer side effects and complications for our patients."

Arun Puranik, M.D., director of Community Care Physicians IGRT department, reports that he makes corrections to his patients' positions prior to virtually every treatment session, based on the images generated by the Varian IGRT imaging system. "There is always a correction because there is always some displacement of the prostate from day to day -- anywhere from as little as 2-3 millimeters up to 11/2 centimeters," he said. "That's a lot of motion from day to day, and before now, we had no way to deal with it. Varian's On-Board Imager -- we call it the OBI -- enables the fastest, most accurate technique I have seen for localizing the prostate."
"The Varian system makes it possible for us to deliver this highly-accurate form of treatment in fifteen minutes," said Dr. Puranik. "We can generate the images, use them to reposition the patient and still complete the treatment within a normal treatment appointment in a highly efficient process. That's important to our patients, who are much more comfortable when treatments are done quickly."

While the majority of Dr. Puranik's patients are treated for prostate cancer, he uses image-guided radiation therapy to treat other forms of cancer as well. When treating tumors in the head, neck, or lung, for instance, he uses Varian's IGRT technology to look at anatomical landmarks near the tumor. "This is very important, and even more so when you're dealing with tumors near the spinal cord or some other critical structure," he said.

On-Board Imager and IGRT

The center's new treatment system from Varian Medical Systems combines imaging and treatment technologies on a single machine. Radiation is delivered using a Varian Clinac(R) linear accelerator equipped with the company's On-Board Imager(TM) device for imaging and tumor tracking. Community Care Physicians of Latham, New York is the first treatment center in the upstate New York area to offer this type of treatment to cancer patients.

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