East Texas Medical Center Uses Laser to Fight Cancer
Published Apr 25, 2008
The $4 million CyberKnife machine aims high intensity radiation at tumors with sub-millimeter accuracy.
At East Texas Medical Center, a $4 million robot, guided by neurosurgeons, radiologists and oncologists, uses radiation to treat tumors like a surgeon’s scalpel.
The CyberKnife™ Stereotactic Radiosurgery System in Tyler at first targeted lesions of the brain and spine but now can help dissolve tumors of the lungs, liver and pancreas, says Todd Sigmon, administrator of the center’s Cancer Institute.
“It is pinpoint, controlled beams of radioactive energy,” Sigmon says. “Radiation has been used to treat cancer for 50-plus years. This just further refines it.”
CyberKnife™ of Texas is a collaborative effort between the ETMC Regional Healthcare System and Tyler Neurosurgical Associates. It is one of more than 160 such systems worldwide, according to Accuray, the company that makes the machines.
The treatment can target tumors that may have once been considered inoperable or untreatable. The 1-millimeter beam of energy is much more precise than traditional radiation treatment and can attack tumors while sparing healthy tissue and organs, Sigmon says.
Each patient and each tumor are discussed at a conference attended by 20 to 25 doctors from a range of specialties. Misty Weathers, a registered nurse and the CyberKnife™ coordinator, walks patients through a process that includes careful screening and intense imaging so doctors can pinpoint tumor location. Still, most tumors actually move.
The CyberKnife™ system tracks them.
“Almost everything outside the skull moves when you breathe, and this corrects for patient movement and tumor movement,” Weathers says.
The ETMC Cancer Institute began offering the treatment in November 2006; 110 patients were treated in the first 10 months.
“We’ve been doing it long enough now we are seeing results,” Misty says.
One of the first lung patients, for example, recently returned after treatment, and the CAT scan found no lesions.
“The films are pretty amazing,” she says. “One guy, it is like it was never there. It melted away.”
Story by Pamela Coyle
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