Monday, November 12, 2007
Sacred Heart Offers Next Generation in Cancer Treatment Technology
Sacred Heart Hospital’s Cancer Center in Pensacola has installed the most precise cancer treatment technology available today, offering new hope to area residents who are battling cancer and many neurological disorders.
“This system represents a tremendous step forward. It’s the next generation in cancer care technology,” said Dr. Gerald Lowrey, a radiation oncologist at Sacred Heart Cancer Center. “For our patients, it means faster treatments, fewer side effects, and a better chance at completely destroying the tumor. It allows patients at our cancer center to have all of the latest radiation therapy tools in one place.”
The new Trilogy Stereotactic System improves the effectiveness of cancer treatments by delivering tightly focused radiation beams to tumors with tremendous accuracy.
“No two cancers are alike and this machine provides us with the versatility we need to customize treatments according to the specifics of each patient’s case,” Lowrey added. “Thanks to the system’s three dimensional images of the patient’s anatomy, our medical team is able to precisely target very small tumors and tumors that are close to vital organs, nerves or the spine. In some cases, we can treat cancers that were previously untreatable with conventional radiation therapy.”
Radiation therapy is used today in more than half of all cancer treatments. “Better diagnostic tools are making it possible for us to see tumors much earlier, when they’re still very small, so stereotactic radiosurgery is likely to play a much larger role in the future of cancer care,” said Dr. Krentel. “We can now use radiotherapy to treat more types of cancer with better specificity and accuracy.
Dr. Krentel said the more precise radiation oncology system will be very helpful in treating many types of cancer. The system can be customized to treat tumors of any size or shape, or treat multiple tumors.
“Using the Trilogy system, we have the potential to greatly improve treatment outcomes by doing a better job of protecting healthy tissue while delivering more precise doses to the cancer,” said Dr. Krentel.
At the core of the Trilogy system is Varian’s high-powered medical linear accelerator, a machine that rotates around the patient to deliver radiotherapy treatments from many angles. The system allows the Sacred Heart team to shape the radiation beam to match the three-dimensional shape of the tumor.
The Cancer Center at Sacred Heart is a full-service cancer center affiliated with M. D. Anderson Physicians Network®. As a result of this affiliation, Sacred Heart cancer patients can gain access to the latest clinical care guidelines developed by teams of specialists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, the nation’s leading cancer center. More information on Trilogy can be found in the Cancer Center pages of this web site, http://www.sacred-heart.org/cancercenter.asp
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