BEIJING, and PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 11 /PRNewswire/ —
Chongqing Cancer Hospital in Southwest China has become the first
treatment center in Southwest China to offer cancer patients a
faster, more precise form of image-guided radiotherapy that
potentially enables doctors to improve outcomes while extending
more advanced care to more patients. Clinicians at the
hospital have used RapidArc® radiotherapy from Varian Medical
Systems to treat patients for cancers of the nasopharynx, cervix,
breast, and lung.
“RapidArc is a major step forward in cancer treatment,” said Dr.
Yongzhong Wu, M.D., vice president of the hospital and director of
the Department of Radiation Therapy. “Compared with earlier
forms of treatment, like 3-D conformal or even traditional
intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), RapidArc is more precise,
and faster, so patients have less disruption of their daily
lives.”
RapidArc delivers a precise and efficient treatment in a single
or multiple arcs of the treatment machine around the patient.
By varying the speed of rotation, the shape of the beam, and
the dose delivery rate, doctors can use RapidArc to create
finely-shaped dose distributions that closely match the size and
shape of the tumor while sparing healthy tissues. Faster treatments
allow for greater precision, since there is less chance of patient
or tumor movement during treatment delivery. Shorter
treatments also help to improve comfort by reducing the amount of
time that patients must be immobilized on the treatment table.
“We recently treated a 50-year-old woman with cervical cancer,”
said Dr. Wu. “She came to us with irregular bleeding,
abdominal pain, and abdominal distension. After a month of
RapidArc treatments, her condition appeared to improve markedly.
And she appears to have avoided many of the side effects
commonly associated with conventional radiotherapy for cervical
cancer, such as cystitis, intestinal obstr
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