"Here in Zurich we have a long history of delivering IMRT treatments and we focus strongly on complicated head and neck tumors. For such treatments, RapidArc is an extremely valuable new capability to meet our goals. Our first patient particularly appreciated the faster treatment because she suffers from claustrophobia and finds it daunting to lie on the treatment table for very long, so having a fast and open system is a major advantage over slower treatments in a tunnel-like system. Also, the system's cone-beam CT capabilities allow us to implement an adaptive radiotherapy approach where we see big changes in the size and shape of the tumor during treatment."

Zurich University Hospital and Gottingen University Hospital are among more than 70 institutions in the world with the new RapidArc treatment capability for image-guided IMRT. Conventional IMRT treatments are slower and more difficult for radiotherapy radiographers because they target tumors using a complex sequence of fixed beams from multiple angles.


About Varian Medical Systems

Varian Medical Systems, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, is the world's leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions with radiotherapy, radiosurgery, proton therapy, and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers and medical oncology practices. Varian is a premier supplier of tubes and digital detectors for X-ray imaging in medical, scientific, and industrial applications and also supplies X-ray imaging products for cargo screening and industrial inspection. Varian Medical Systems employs approximately 5,100 people who are located at manufacturing sites in North America and Europe and in its 60 sales and support offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com/.




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