Hundreds of cancer patients have been treated at Tygerberg Hospital over the past 14 months with a high-tech radiotherapy machine that can zap cancer cells much more accurately.
Installed in August last year, the Varian TrueBeam linear accelerator focuses beams of radiation on specific parts of the patient’s body where the cancerous cells are located, and so far it has done almost 9000 rounds of radiotherapy on more than 550 patients, says the hospital.
Patients with breast, prostate, gynaecological, colorectal and lung cancers can be treated in a new way, says the hospital.
Dr Henriette Burger, head of radiation oncology at the hospital, said their teams had travelled to Germany and Italy for training on the optimal use of the system.
“On-site training sessions with Varian experts have further helped our team to master the new techniques. To ensure that patients’ treatment schedules are not interrupted, the team has often stayed on after-hours to commission and test new functionalities,” she said.
Medical physicist Ricus van Reenen said: “The team have been able to implement a number of new advanced radiotherapy technologies with the new machine. The first is deep inspiration breath-hold gating for patients with breast cancer through which the radiotherapy is timed to align with the patient’s breathing patterns. This reduces the radiation dose to normal lung and heart and decreases the chance of radiotherapy side-effects.
“The second example of new radiotherapy technology is the use of volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) to deliver radiotherapy to the brain and spinal cord, also called craniospinal irradiation, in children and adolescents with brain tumours.
“Using the VMAT technique ensures precise radiotherapy dose delivery to the areas at risk of cancer spread, whilst protecting the organs and bones in the body that are still developing and growing.”
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