Cancer has emerged as a lifestyle disease with an increasing number of people falling prey to it over the last decade.
Cancer has emerged as a lifestyle disease with an increasing number of people falling prey to it over the last decade.
However, the good news is that the pace of development in cancer treatment, especially radiation oncology, is quickening with innovations. Dr Kumar Swamy, consultant radiation oncologist, Healthcare Global Limited (HCG), detailed the latest developments in radiation oncology available in the city.
With a phenomenal jump in imaging and software technology, radiotherapy has seen unprecedented development in the last 10 years in it’s over 100 years of existence.
“With development of TrueBeam STx and Precision Artiste in 2000, radiotherapy has become far safer and effective in the treatment of cancer. For example, earlier, prostate cancer could not be treated with radiotherapy, but now radiotherapy and radio surgery are becoming the preferred modality of treatment for prostate cancer,” Dr Swamy said. There are several non-cancerous tumours and diseases that are targeted by treatment using these sophisticated equipment, he added.
Another development is the introduction of robotics in radiotherapy. With this, radio surgery has got a shot in the arm.
“Radio surgery is a specialised technique of radiotherapy where innumerable small beams get concentrated at a point and act together in destroying cancer cells that are resistant to conventional radiotherapy,” Dr Swamy said.
CyberKnife is the outcome of fusion of imaging, the most sophisticated tracking software and robotics. “Compared with linear accelerator-based radio surgery, CyberKnife radio surgery is technically more efficient in targeting the cancer and avoiding normal tissues, by automatic robotic adjustment of the position of the patient, bringing cancer cells in the line of a sharp radiation beam,” he added.
However, a combination of treatments has been the most effective way of treating cancer. “Surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy have been combined in a way to overcome the disadvantage of one over the other. Similarly in radiation treatment, an amalgamation of different types of radiotherapy machines is the best way,” Dr Swamy said.
“CyberKnife, being the most effective radio-surgery machine, plays a key role in supplementing the benefits of linear accelerator-based radiotherapy. And with the availability of drugs killing cancer cells exclusively without effecting normal cells, robotic radio-surgery is going to play a vital role in the treatment of cancer,” Dr Swamy added.
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