Clinical Experts Detail How They Use Varian's RapidArc™ Technology To Improve The Precision And Speed Of Cancer Treatments

Main Category: Radiology / Nuclear Medicine
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 18 Sep 2008 - 2:00 PDT

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Cancer treatment experts reported today about how they are using RapidArc™ technology from Varian Medical Systems to target tumors more precisely and to speed the delivery of image-guided intensity-modulated arc therapy treatments. Clinicians from the first three European hospitals to start clinical treatments using RapidArc - VU University medical center in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark and the Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland in Bellinzona, Switzerland - addressed a packed Emerging Technologies Symposium at the annual ESTRO conference to give detailed accounts of early patient treatments.

Dr. Ben Slotman of VU University medical center presented the results of RapidArc treatments in head & neck tumor, lung tumor, brain tumor and brain metastases patients, concluding, "RapidArc clearly offers fast treatment planning and fast delivery, which means less patient and tumor motion, a more comfortable experience for the patient and the ability to treat more patients each day."

Dr. Slotman said early treatments demonstrated that planning results were at least equivalent to conventional intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) results and sometimes better, that the planned dose corresponds well to the delivered dose and treatment delivery is often under two minutes. He also described the use of RapidArc as an attractive alternative for 'conventional' stereotactic radiotherapy for tumors in the brain and lung, mainly because of the significantly shorter delivery times for these high doses.

Luca Cozzi, PD, of the Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland, outlined the results of his research into the RapidArc QA and verification process, again revealing it compares very favourably to those of conventional IMRT. "We were impressed to see how precisely the delivery can be matched to expected calculations," said Dr.Cozzi. "Our pre-treatment quality assurance findings confirmed that RapidArc can be delivered with even better agreement to plans than we were used to with IMRT."

Dr. Svend-Aage Engelholm of Rigshospitalet reported the results of a RapidArc program on prostate cancer patients. "Both RapidArc and IMRT plans were calculated for sixteen patients and RapidArc was only offered to those patients where a better dose distribution was observed," said Dr. Engelholm. "Fifteen of them received RapidArc and the treatment delivery time was less than a minute and a half in each case."

RapidArc delivers a volumetric intensity-modulated radiation therapy treatment in a single or multiple arcs of the treatment machine around the patient and makes it possible to deliver advanced image-guided IMRT two to eight times faster than is possible with conventional IMRT. Unrelated clinical studies on radiotherapy correlate the ability to spare more healthy tissue with reduced complications and better outcomes.

About Varian Medical Systems

Varian Medical Systems, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, is the world's leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions with radiotherapy, radiosurgery, proton therapy, and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers and medical oncology practices. Varian is a premier supplier of tubes and digital detectors for X-ray imaging in medical, scientific, and industrial applications and also supplies X-ray imaging products for cargo screening and industrial inspection. Varian Medical Systems employs approximately 4,800 people who are located at manufacturing sites in North America and Europe and in its 60 sales and support offices around the world.

Varian Medical Systems

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