INDIANAPOLIS – Radiation therapy at St. Francis Hospital & Health Centers is being delivered in a revolutionary way, providing physicians with more options and flexibility to precisely treat cancerous tissue.It’s called TomoTherapy®, and it uses thousands of radiation beamlets delivered continuously 360 degrees around the patient.
Designed and built in the Midwest, the TomoTherapy unit at St. Francis is the first in use in central Indiana. Tomo means “slice” and since cancer is diagnosed looking at every angle, treatment can be given precisely to every slice with the help of computer assisted tomography (CT) scans generated by the TomoTherapy machine.
"St. Francis has recognized the need to provide the most precise treatment planning and delivery capabilities,” said Peter Garrett, M.D., medical director of oncology at St. Francis. "In patients we have treated to date, our expectations have been exceeded in the amount of healthy tissue that we can spare and by the quickness of the treatments, leading to a more convenient experience for the patients.”
Patients are treated with a helical mode of delivery (360 degrees of continuous treatment) which results in maximum dose delivered to the cancer site while sparing normal structures.
Patients are scanned before each treatment to confirm accuracy and then are targeted similar to a CT scan. The initial scan takes about five minutes and treatments, which are painless, begin immediately after the scan.
During a patient’s six-to-eight weeks of treatment, many physical changes can occur. Tumors shrink, organs move in the body and patients can gain or lose weight. This means initial treatment plans may be changed during therapy.
To accommodate these physical changes TomoTherapy uses an adaptive planning system. Since the TomoTherapy planning system is part of the overall unit, adjustments can be made to the original plan during the overall course of therapy, ensuring radiation delivery to the cancer immediately.
TomoTherapy is a complete package of treatment planning software, quality assurance tools, image acquisition and treatment delivery. Since all the data is in one system and not transferred between multiple systems, there is less risk of error.
Types of cancers ideally treated with TomoTherapy are prostate, head and neck and the central nervous system and all cranial tumors. All have critical normal tissues that are necessary to avoid yet require high doses of radiation for adequate treatment.”
The first patient treated with TomoTherapy was in 2003. More than 100 units are now being installed worldwide, according to TomoTherapy officials
More information about the Cancer Care Services program at St. Francis is at http://stfrancishospitals.org/cancer and at http://stfranciscancercare360.org. To learn more about TomoTherapy, go to www.tomotherapy.com.
