St. Joseph’s Treating Prostate Cancer With CyberKnife
The CyberKnife is a state-of-the-art robotic system used to perform non-invasive tumor treatment. It combines image-guidance with a robotic delivery of radiation to track and destroy tumors and other lesions.
St. Joseph’s became the first hospital in the Southwest to acquire the CyberKnife technology, and has been treating brain, lung and spinal patients with the revolutionary device.
“CyberKnife treatments for prostate cancer are a great addition to our current procedures.” says David Brachman, MD, Medical Director of Radiation Oncology at St. Joseph's. “The CyberKnife can maximize radiation dosages to the prostate gland with minimal effects to surrounding tissues and organs. It is truly a revolutionary approach to curing this tumor.”
Dr. Brachman says during the last several years, St. Joseph’s doctors have “continued to maximize this breakthrough technology and now, its benefits are available to prostate cancer patients.”
With CyberKnife the normally lengthy treatment course has been significantly shortened from approximately 40 daily treatments given over eight weeks or more using conventional external beam radiotherapy down to only five treatments delivered over 10 days.
Prostate cancer strikes approximately 186,000 American men each year and kills more than 28,000 making it the second most common cancer after skin cancer and the second leading cancer killer of men after lung cancer.
Through the advantages of CyberKnife treatments, patients can experience reduced side effects, thanks to the system’s ability to deliver high doses of radiation with precise accuracy. Since CyberKnife treatments are non-invasive, patients lessen their chances of side effects associated with conventional surgical methods used to treat prostate cancer, including sexual dysfunction or incontinence.
Publish date:
Wednesday, January 02, 2013