A nearly $6 million investment in Tanner Cancer Care’s Roy Richards, Sr. Cancer Center has enabled us to bring online a powerful new tool to the region to help treat cancer.
Tanner Cancer Care’s new linear accelerator uses Varian Medical Systems’ advanced TrueBeam platform for image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery. It is the first fully-integrated radiation delivery system designed from the ground up to treat a moving target quickly and accurately.
Radiation is a standard treatment for cancer, prized for its ability to destroy the DNA in cancer cells, thereby destroying the cancer. The radiation is often delivered to the site of the cancer on a machine called a linear accelerator, which delivers a precise beam of radiation to the cancerous tissue.
The TrueBeam system on Tanner’s new linear accelerator can be used for all forms of advanced external-beam radiotherapy including image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery (IGRT and SRS).
Radiosurgery uses highly focused beams of powerful radiation to overwhelm cancer cells. It damages the DNA in cancer cells, so when the cells attempt to divide, the tumor shrinks.
Similar to traditional external beam radiation therapy, radiosurgery is performed with a linear accelerator that generates a high-energy radiation beam focused on the tumor. The beam is delivered from many different angles to target each part of the tumor and deliver the prescribed amount of radiation.
The difference is, radiosurgery can deliver a much more accurate — and much stronger — dose of radiation, better destroying the cancer cells’ DNA and leading to faster courses of treatment.
While a typical course of radiotherapy might require eight weeks or longer of almost daily radiation treatments, radiosurgery can achieve the results we need in as few as five sessions in just about two weeks.
Although the total number of radiosurgery treatments is fewer, each session usually takes longer than traditional radiotherapy treatments, giving providers time to make sure the patient is correctly positioned for treatment. Stabilization devices are also sometimes necessary.
The TrueBeam system is a radiotherapy system that uses noninvasive tumor-destroying radiation to treat cancers throughout the body while minimizing exposure to surrounding healthy tissue. Our ability to administer to cancerous cells while preserving healthy cells in the vicinity of the cancer is unparalleled on this new platform.
Compared to older treatment modalities, it’s the difference between administering radiation with a shotgun or a laser.
For more information about cancer treatments and services available at Tanner, visit Tanner Cancer Care.
Tanner Radiation Oncology is located in Carrollton. For more information, visit TannerRadiationOncology.org or call 770-812-9824.