Oncology  

Malaysian cancer centre offers high-precision radiotherapy with Varian's Trilogy accelerator

26 July 2006

Nilai, Malaysia. The NCI Cancer Hospital in Nilai, south of Kuala Lumpur, has installed a Trilogy linear accelerator from Varian Medical Systems. The hospital has launched treatment programs offering the latest in high-precision radiotherapy techniques, including intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) and stereotactic radiosurgery.

More than 40 patients have been treated on the Trilogy machine since treatments started in the middle of April. Prior to acquiring the Trilogy system, the hospital only had a low energy linear accelerator that limited the treatments they could offer.

“The new system is marvellous because it enables us to offer our patients treatments that could not have been done here before,” said Dr. Govindaraju Selvaratnam, the hospital’s medical director. “The additional accuracy of IMRT using the Trilogy has given us the confidence to boost doses to the tumour because we know we’re reducing doses to adjacent critical structures. We can reach dose levels with the Trilogy that we simply couldn’t before and our patients are benefiting as a result.”

Dr. Selvaratnam added that as well as launching standard IMRT programs for prostrate, breast and head/neck cancer patients, the Trilogy accelerator enabled his team to handle more difficult and challenging cases, such as large-field treatments to target tumour recurrence in the chest wall and treating tumours in the oesophagus and large sarcomas. “With Trilogy we can address huge treatment fields of a size that we never believed we would be able to achieve here at NCI,” he added.

In August, the hospital will begin a stereotactic program involving powerful treatments in one-to-five sessions to control metastatic outbreaks. Shortly afterwards they plan to begin 3D imaging using the On-Board Imager’s conebeam CT imaging mode as well as treatments using respiratory gating, whereby the treatment beam is automatically switched on and off in tandem with a patient’s normal breathing cycle.

Dr. Selvaratnam and his team are currently treating approximately 22 patients a day on the Trilogy linear accelerator. The private NCI Cancer Hospital handles up to 800 new cancer patients each year, half of them from the nation’s capital Kuala Lumpur.

"Trilogy is the first practical, clinically-viable linear accelerator that is capable of delivering all forms of external-beam radiation therapy," said Dow Wilson, head of Varian’s Oncology Systems business. "It enables doctors to choose and use the most appropriate treatment modality for treating cancer in the body or the head and neck, and to deliver the full spectrum of treatments, all on one machine in a single room."

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