Until recently, the only treatment option for patients with inoperable pancreatic tumours that have not yet spread was a combination of conventional chemo with radiotherapy, which uses high-energy X-rays to kill cancer cells.
However, because this is not a very precise therapy, surrounding normal tissues are also irradiated, and this limits the dose of radiation to the tumour.
Yet limiting the dose can make standard radiotherapy fairly ineffective. It’s a catch-22.
CyberKnife delivers an identical type of radiation, but in a more sophisticated, accurate and targeted way. This means the side-effects are greatly reduced.
While conventional radiotherapy uses large beams from three or four treatment angles, CyberKnife uses a flexible robotic arm which is attached to a miniaturised radiotherapy machine.
This gives enormous manoeuvrability, firing hundreds of pencil-thin beams of radiation from thousands of angles around the patient, which converge on the tumour.
This allows odd-shaped tumours in critical places to be targeted extremely accurately, with little damage to surrounding healthy tissues, so higher doses can be given over a shorter period of time.
The machine also has sophisticated software that tracks the location of the tumour with millimetre precision every few seconds using tiny gold markers as a guide. The robot can also follow tumour movement as the patient breathes in and out.
The treatment session is longer than for conventional radiotherapy, which lasts ten to 15 minutes. But 1 – 5 sessions are needed, instead of up to 30.
CyberKnife can be suitable for patients whose cancer is inoperable but has not spread. It can also be used as retreatment following previous radiotherapy.
CyberKnife has been used to treat many sorts of cancers – lung, liver, spine, pancreatic, prostate and brain cancers.
It is still fairly new for pancreatic cancer, but early research data from the U.S. and Europe shows that in up to 80 per cent of cases, it controls the primary pancreatic tumour for a significant period of time – usually six months – or, in some cases, even eradicates it completely.
The problem is that while it is a very good ‘local’ treatment, CyberKnife doesn’t stop the cancer spreading elsewhere.
That’s why CyberKnife should usually be combined with chemotherapy, and not used on its own in this disease.
Around 150 patients have undergone CyberKnife treatment since its UK launch last March – 10 per cent of whom have pancreatic cancer. The majority of patients paid privately.
The cost is likely to come down by next summer, when there will be up to five CyberKnifes in use in Britain. It is a innovative treatment which can give people a lot of hope and a few more precious months.
Dr Andy Gaya is a consultant clinical oncologist at Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospitals, The Harley Street Clinic & The London Oncology Clinic
Until recently, the only treatment option for patients with inoperable pancreatic tumours that have not yet spread was a combination of conventional chemo with radiotherapy, which uses high-energy X-rays to kill cancer cells.
However, because this is not a very precise therapy, surrounding normal tissues are also irradiated, and this limits the dose of radiation to the tumour.
Yet limiting the dose can make standard radiotherapy fairly ineffective. It’s a catch-22.
CyberKnife delivers an identical type of radiation, but in a more sophisticated, accurate and targeted way. This means the side-effects are greatly reduced.
While conventional radiotherapy uses large beams from three or four treatment angles, CyberKnife uses a flexible robotic arm which is attached to a miniaturised radiotherapy machine.
This gives enormous manoeuvrability, firing hundreds of pencil-thin beams of radiation from thousands of angles around the patient, which converge on the tumour.
This allows odd-shaped tumours in critical places to be targeted extremely accurately, with little damage to surrounding healthy tissues, so higher doses can be given over a shorter period of time.
The machine also has sophisticated software that tracks the location of the tumour with millimetre precision every few seconds using tiny gold markers as a guide. The robot can also follow tumour movement as the patient breathes in and out.
The treatment session is longer than for conventional radiotherapy, which lasts ten to 15 minutes. But 1 – 5 sessions are needed, instead of up to 30.
CyberKnife can be suitable for patients whose cancer is inoperable but has not spread. It can also be used as retreatment following previous radiotherapy.
CyberKnife has been used to treat many sorts of cancers – lung, liver, spine, pancreatic, prostate and brain cancers.
It is still fairly new for pancreatic cancer, but early research data from the U.S. and Europe shows that in up to 80 per cent of cases, it controls the primary pancreatic tumour for a significant period of time – usually six months – or, in some cases, even eradicates it completely.
The problem is that while it is a very good ‘local’ treatment, CyberKnife doesn’t stop the cancer spreading elsewhere.
That’s why CyberKnife should usually be combined with chemotherapy, and not used on its own in this disease.
Around 150 patients have undergone CyberKnife treatment since its UK launch last March – 10 per cent of whom have pancreatic cancer. The majority of patients paid privately.
The cost is likely to come down by next summer, when there will be up to five CyberKnifes in use in Britain. It is a innovative treatment which can give people a lot of hope and a few more precious months.