My life was saved by the same knife-wielding robot that treated Patrick Swayze

from Daily Mail Online:

>>Just over a year ago Alan Bowley was a dying man. Diagnosed with an inoperable tumour on his pancreas, Alan's only option was palliative radiotherapy to buy him a few more months of life.

But after Alan's wife stumbled across a treatment on the internet - just a few weeks after this fateful diagnosis - he was soon in a hospital in Washington DC having Cyberknife therapy.

Dr Gregory Gagnon, of the Department of Radiation Medicine at Georgetown University Hospital, who treated Alan, says: 'This has opened up a whole new wave of cancers for treatment which were previously considered inoperable. For example, we have been collating data on treatment of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer over the past three years.

'Usually this condition has a survival rate of 30 per cent over three years. Patients who have undergone Cyberknife have a survival rate of around 90 per cent over the same period.

'We have treated spinal cancers without damaging the spinal cord and the vital nerves that surround the spine, and can even use it to treat multiple secondary tumours.'

In other aggressive cancers, such as pancreatic, Dr Gagnon claims it has a 100 per cent success rate of holding the treated tumour at the same size.

There are Cyberknife centres in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Turkey, with at least eight in the U.S. - including, incredibly, one in a pet hospital in New York. But currently none in the UK. 'Janet came across an American website run by people who had used Cyberknife while we were still waiting to see if my surgeon could remove the tumour here in the UK,' says Alan.

The NHS has so far baulked at introducing this facility, but in January 2009 the private Harley Street Clinic will open its £15 million Cyberknife centre, the first in the UK. It estimates that the cost of treatment will be upwards of £12,000, although those with private health insurance should be covered.