Cyberknife

several interesting infos taken from the IV MB (posts by yyy60):

Broward Health is South Florida’s First Hospital System to Offer CyberKnife Radiosurgery

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Jan 23, 2009 – Deerfield Beach, FL – South Florida’s first and only hospital-based Cyberknife – the world’s most advanced robotic radiosurgery system used to treat tumors – is now available at Broward Health North Broward Medical Center.

CyberKnife provides a non-surgical alternative for treating cancers and tumors of the head, spine, pancreas, prostate, liver and lungs. Its robotic arm is able to follow a patient’s movement and can treat the patient from any direction to delivers highly localized, high doses of radiation from outside the body to a tumor or lesion inside the body.

“This non-invasive treatment allows tumors to be tracked in real-time, thereby potentially offering the best whole-body radiosurgery solution for our South Florida community,” said Anurag Agarwal, M.D., medical director of radiation oncology for Broward Health.

---

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Treats 1,000th CyberKnife Patient

Friday, January 23,2009
By TuBoston.com

BOSTON – Frank Cleary thought he just had a bad bout of pneumonia. But a chest X-ray revealed a far more serious diagnosis – melanoma. A subsequent MRI revealed further devastating news – a brain tumor. That is when Cleary and his wife Jean decided to come to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, becoming the 1,000th patient to be treated at the Keith C. Field CyberKnife Center.

Hailed as a revolutionary treatment, the CyberKnife uses concentrated beams of radiation administered from different targeting positions and angles using a linear accelerator mounted on a robotic manipulator. All of the beams intersect and converge within the tumor or lesion where the cumulative radiation dose is high enough to destroy the cancer cells and stop the growth of active tissue.

“CyberKnife gives safe, accurate radiosurgery treatment anywhere in the body using image guidance, rather than a surgically applied rigid stereotactic frame,” said Cleary’s radiation oncologist Scott Floyd. “This allows for greater patient comfort, especially if multiple treatments are needed. The imaging guidance system lets patients avoid the surgical procedure of applying a radiosurgery frame for each treatment.”

----

Study: Cyber Knife proves itself with spinal tumors

**** translated from German ****

Ärztezeitung online, 23.01.2009 12:03

MUNICH (eb). The therapy with the Cyber Knife, a unique Hochdosisbetrahlung, has proved successful in spinal tumors. This was according to the University of Munich, the world's largest study on Radiosurgery without metal marker. The patients benefit because they usually only once and outpatient treatment and the tumor-related pain subside quickly. Moreover, compared to the surgical complication rate is lower.

Between 2005 and 2007, 102 patients with one or two spinal tumors in the European Cyber Knife Center Munich-Grosshadern in cooperation with the Hospital of the University of Munich (LMU) below. The total of 134 tumors were secondary malignant tumors in patients with breast, kidney, colon, prostate and lung cancer and sarcomas.

Especially striking was the rapid reduction in pain a week after the irradiation of the cancer tissue (Spine 26, 2008, 2929). Due to the unique therapy only, and without the outpatient medication altogether, reduce the cost compared to traditional surgery significantly. The complication rates are lower in comparison.

Radiosurgery for tumors of the spine is a relatively new method.

The radiation spinal surgery is a relatively new method for primary or supplemental treatment of tumors of the spine. Similar to the neurosurgical rays of the brain surgery is to a high precision is necessary because the radiation environment is very fragile structures, such as the spinal cord, are located.

The natural movement of the spine in the target area, for example, by breathing, poses a particular challenge, because the patient on the treatment table with a Cyber Knife treatment is not fixed. Through the respiratory motion changes during irradiation, the position of the tumor to be irradiated.