First cancer centre in Germany to use Varian RapidArc treatment
31 January 2009
Three prostate cancer patients have become the first people in
Germany to be treated using Varian's new, faster form of radiotherapy
that potentially enables doctors to improve outcomes while extending
more advanced care to more patients. Südharz Krankenhaus in Nordhausen
delivered the faster treatment using RapidArc radiotherapy technology
from Varian Medical Systems.
RapidArc delivers a precise and efficient treatment in a single or
multiple arcs of the treatment machine around the patient and makes it
possible to deliver advanced image-guided intensity modulated
radiotherapy (IMRT) two to eight times faster than is possible with
conventional IMRT.
At Südharz Krankenhaus Nordhausen, doctors have been able to reduce
the treatment time to just two and a half minutes compared with up to 30
minutes for complex IMRT treatments.
“It is very gratifying for me to begin treatments using the most
modern moving arc method of radiotherapy,” says Dr Wolfgang Oehler, head
of the radiotherapy department. “The three patients are excited to be
the first in Germany to receive such treatments although the treatment
was so quick that one patient questioned whether he had received the
full dose. We assured him that he certainly had and he was pleased to
only have to lie on the treatment table for a short time.”
Dr Oehler said RapidArc was a valuable weapon in the hospital’s goal
of bringing down waiting lists. “We knew we needed a brilliant new
method of shortening treatment times and avoiding waiting lists while
improving the quality of the treatment and it was not a hard decision to
select RapidArc,” he added.
Südharz Krankenhaus treats up to 900 patients a year using two Varian
Clinac medical linear accelerators. The hospital pioneered advanced IMRT
treatments in Germany, carrying out the country’s first such treatment
in June 2001 and treating a further 2,733 patients with the highly
conformal technique in the eight years since.
The hospital’s work has been praised by the president of the German
Cancer Aid Society, Prof Dr. Dagmar Schipanski. “For about seven years
we have closely followed the IMRT activities at the Südharz Krankenhaus
Nordhausen,” she said. “Clinicians at this centre have treated more than
2,500 patients with IMRT and built a huge clinical knowledge base and
experience on advanced treatment techniques. As a citizen of the state
of Thüringen I’m particularly proud that a clinic in our state has now
become the first in Germany to introduce such an elegant and efficient
technique as RapidArc.”
With RapidArc, Varian’s Clinac accelerator can target radiation beams
at a tumor while continuously rotating around the patient. 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.
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