The James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer was encouraged when David Cameron brought up the subject of kidney cancer drugs that are currently unavailable or difficult to obtain under the NHS last night in the first election debate. Cameron highlighted the fact that England’s death rate from cancer is worse than Bulgaria and one of the reasons is that there are many cancer drugs that are not being funded by the NHS, despite the fact that they are clinically proved treatments. The James Whale Fund is delighted that the gravitas of the situation is finally coming to light and hopes that whichever party wins the coming election they make the necessary changes so that no more people suffer due to inaccessibility of cancer drugs. Continue Reading »
Some days it seems like everyone’s talking about Cyberknife. Just when we thought that it all had been said this piece sums up, in layman’s terms, the real advantages. Why use Cyberknife to treat tumours?
Precise focus means less collateral damage
No need to wear a hospital gown or for the surgical team to scrub up.
Fewer hospital visits
Faster recovery – most patient resume their normal activities on the same day of treatment.
No surgery means none of the risks associated with anaesthesia.
No post-operative pain, no risk of infection, no or unsightly scars.
According to the leading financial website Motley Fool the manufacturers of Cyberknife systems are seeing an upswing in revenues as patient numbers increase.
Medical-equipment specialist Accuray maker of the advanced CyberKnife robotic radiosurgery system has seen a pickup in orders as more users adopt the technology. In its second fiscal quarter, the company boosted its backlog by 18 orders and installed 11 new systems, bringing its installed base around the world to 190 systems. On top of the success in new orders and placements, Accuray reported a big jump in service revenue, which it expects will continue to grow as its installed base of CyberKnife units grows worldwide. Similar to the brighter outlooks coming from medical-device and medical-equipment makers Medtronic and Varian Medical Systems, Accuray raised the lower end of its revenue guidance for the fiscal year.
The most common intracranial lesions are metastases and malignant (e.g., astrocytomas) or benign (e.g., meningiomas, acoustic neuromas) primary tumours. Primary benign brain tumours and malignancies are much less common than brain metastases. Stereotactic radiosurgery has become an accepted treatment option for patients with meningiomas, vestibular schwannomas and pituitary adenomas. Continue Reading »
Following the treatment of the 100th patient Drs Nick Plowman, Andrew Gaya and Chris Nutting describe in this illustrative, plain English video clip how Cyberknife works. Chris Nutting talks about a lung cancer patient who would not respond to chemotherapy, but is now in remission thanks to Cyberknife. The point is that the therapeutic benefits of radiation have been known since the days of Marie Curie, but thanks to computer software, MRI and CT, therapeutic radiation can now be delivered precisely to where it counts.
A man from Greater London has become the 100th person to be treated at the UK’s first CyberKnife Centre at the Harley Street Clinic in London.
The man, who has been suffering from prostate cancer, could not be treated by other forms of radiotherapy. He is among a growing number of patients sent to the private sector for CyberKnife radiotherapy treatment by their NHS trusts. Continue Reading »
The CyberKnife Centre London at The Harley Street Clinic is the first of its kind in the UK. Investment in the latest CyberKnife technology from the USA means that people who have been diagnosed with tumours and other medical conditions previously considered inoperable can now be treated. Continue Reading »
With so much information of varying quality available on the Web, it is critical that patients know who the real experts are and what they are saying about all the new medical technologies. Patients need to know all their options and this requires an authoritative and independent source of information such as the in Capital Health Web site.
Examples of just three areas that have been highlighted in the press over the last month include the following:
Cervical cancer protection and HPV vaccination
The value of breast cancer screening
The importance of early bowel cancer detection and latest treatments
This is an era of patient choice, but what exactly is the choice? You can find out on the in Capital Health, and if the information you are seeking is not covered – you can ask for the leading expert opinion.
As Britain’s first Cyberknife Centre at The Harley Street Clinic gets ready to treat its 100th cancer patient, the revolutionary robotic radiotherapy machine has achieved a new first by treating a cancer patient using a special moving IRIS system which allows finer control and even faster treatment.
As described, CyberKnife is a revolutionary machine that can treat cancers that were previously either impossible or highly difficult to treat. It has a linear accelerator mounted on a very manoeuvrable robot arm which enables highly accurate pencil thin beams of radiation to target tumours from every angle. Its special guidance system allows the machine to move with the breathing of the patient and thus it can destroy tumours with sub millimetre accuracy.
The new IRIS system can vary the aperture of the linear accelerator between pulses of radiation thereby speeding up the treatment and giving greater control. The first patient to be treated using the new IRIS system was a lady with rectal cancer. Her oncologist is Dr Andrew Gaya, one of the pioneers of Cyberknife treatment in the UK said: “This is an extremely useful new accessory for CyberKnife which gives us greater flexibility in treating certain patients,” he said. “Treatment plans are more complex and the IRIS system allows us to deliver more radiation in a shorter time to particularly odd shaped tumours and thus reduces still further the risk of damaging healthy tissue.”
Dr Chris Nutting has written an article in plain English entitled, Cyberknife – A Novel Treatment Solution. This really does seem to be an excellent example of how technology is altering the entire landscape of modern medicine. It really is quite simple, modern imaging methods can accurately map the extent of the cancer and this information can be fed back to precisely inform the irradiation treatment target. Known as ‘image guided therapy, it’s precision surgery without the need for a knife, or even an anaesthetic.
Cancers that can now be treated include the following:
Brain Cancer
Spine Cancer
Many of the vascular problems that occur in the brain also occur in the spine and CyberKnife has marked advantages over other radiosurgical techniques in that it is capable of targeting spinal lesions. Also, vertebral tumours (the vertebra is the spine bone) may similarly be treated by this technology (with sparing of the radiosensitive spinal cord that runs through the vertebra).
Lung Cancer (Single or several tumours in the lung)
Prostate Cancer
Pancreas Cancer
Liver Cancer
Kidney Cancer
In his article, Dr Chris Nutting says, “Quite simply, Cyberknife seems the important advance that we have been waiting for, and more than one lesion can be targeted.”
