Leo Cancer Care, developers of an upright positioning solution for the delivery of Radiation Thera-py, has unveiled significant findings from a study which underlines how its unique upright position-ing system is spearheading a new direction for the treatment of cancer patients.
The first study on pelvic cancer patients positioned in an upright position has been conducted at the Centre Léon Bérard in Lyon, France – a comprehensive cancer centre that is dedicated solely to cancer care, research and education.
Leo Cancer Care’s upright patient positioning system was installed at Centre Léon Bérard for a series of patient trials to determine how delivery of vital cancer treatment in the upright position, as opposed to the traditional method of laying supine (flat/horizontal on a bench), might improve patient experience, clinical effectiveness, and access to radiotherapy.
This groundbreaking new technology forms part of Leo Cancer Care’s mission is to make the de-livery of Radiation Therapy ‘more human’ and according to patients who took part in the study, is a significant improvement on the traditional supine approach.
The aim of the study was to evaluate upright positioning and immobilization accuracy based on optical images, the setup time and comfort in patients with urological, gynaecological, and lower gastro-intestinal tumors undergoing radiation therapy. Upright positioning may affect organ vol-ume, positioning and movement to supine/prone positioning and the study sought to provide data on how it might have beneficial impacts.
The key findings highlighted in the report are:
• The upright positioning system allowed an accurate repositioning within the three set-ups test-ed. On average, the positioning/repositioning was below one millimetre accuracy for patient setup in upright position for pelvic tumor site. (Inter-fraction positioning is the positioning seen with images taken on different treatment fractions/sessions)
• The intra-fraction motion was on average below one millimetres for 80 percent of patients in a 20-minute time frame in the upright position for the pelvic tumor site. This was evaluated as acceptable and, in some cases, better than supine. (Intra-fraction motion is the variability seen in multiple images acquired during the treatment fraction/session ).
• The upright positioning is associated with reasonable positioning and repositioning setup times when one Radiation Therapist (RTT) was involved and much shorter when there were two; On average 14.4 minutes were required for the first positioning with one RTT and 5.0 minutes with two. Subsequent repositioning took on average 4.9 with one RTT and 2.9 minutes with two.
