Baptist Now Treating Lung Tumors with Cyberknife®

Baptist Cancer Services has treated a lung tumor with the CyberKnife® Stereotactic Radiosurgery System.

Because so much less normal tissue is treated, higher doses can be given for each treatment resulting in much shorter courses of treatment

Jackson, MS (PRWEB) November 8, 2005 -- Baptist Cancer Services, a division of Baptist Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., has treated a lung tumor with the CyberKnife® Stereotactic Radiosurgery System. Baptist Cancer Services will have the only system of this kind in the four-state area of Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Radiation oncologist Gregg Dickerson, M.D. treated the hospital's first lung case with the CyberKnife. Baptist's system is one of only 17 facilities in the world equipped with Synchrony, the equipment and software used with the CyberKnife making the kind of treatment this patient received possible.

Synchrony continuously adjusts the aiming of the x-ray beams from the CyberKnife's linear accelerator to match the motion of the tumor--dynamically and conformally--as the patient breathes during treatment. The first Baptist patient treated on the CyberKnife has Stage 1 non-small cell carcinoma but was not a surgical candidate because of medical conditions.

"Surgery would have been the best treatment for him," said Dr. Dickerson. "Standard radiation therapy and chemotherapy was the second best option. Quite a bit of lung would have been affected using standard techniques and equipment."

The treatment required that gold markers be inserted into the patient's body within and adjacent to the targeted tissue for alignment and tracking of the tumor during treatment. Then, the patient underwent a CT scan using thin slices. Using this information, Dr. Dickerson worked with Baptist's Medical Physicist Jeff Garrett to do treatment planning.

For this patient the CyberKnife allowed shorter, more convenient treatment-three sessions versus more than 30 and given over a one-week period instead of 6 to 7 weeks. "It also offered a more precise course of treatment with less normal lung affected and good chances for local control of his disease. He will also be receiving chemotherapy," adds Dr. Dickerson.

"Because so much less normal tissue is treated, higher doses can be given for each treatment resulting in much shorter courses of treatment," Dr. Dickerson explains. "This capability expands the options for the management of patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer who are not surgical candidates.”

Contact:
Robby Channell
601-968-5135

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