Northside Hospital has expanded its radiation therapy services to better accommodate a growing number of patients requiring cancer treatment at the hospital’s Atlanta Cancer Center.
Nearly two-thirds of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy at some point during their treatment. In recent years, Northside has expanded its services, with new facilities in Alpharetta, Canton and Cumming, to give patients increased access to care closer to home. Now, Northside has completed a renovation its Cancer Center in Atlanta including the relocation of an existing linear accelerator from another facility and the addition of a fourth and brand new linear accelerator – Varian Medical Systems’ TrueBeam. The new facility and technology enables Northside to see more patients, while reducing wait times they might experience.
TrueBeam is the latest radiotherapy system from Varian. It offers many advanced features including image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT), intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and RapidArc® radiotherapy. IGRT uses advanced imaging to allow doctors and clinicians to see tumors in real time, so that they can correct the patient’s position and treat the cancer precisely. Northside’s TrueBeam incorporates Vision RT motion management imaging technology to address the challenges of patient motion during treatment and increase the accuracy and safety of each treatment. The technology tracks the patient in 3D real time, calculating any movement the patient makes (including breathing) in all six degrees of freedom.
IMRT enables staff to customize a patient’s radiation dose by varying (or modulating) the amount of radiation that is sent to different parts of the tumor. RapidArc® technology, also available on Northside’s TrueBeam, takes IMRT a step further, generating higher doses of radiation and treating the entire tumor in a single arc around the patient, while sparing normal, healthy tissue and dramatically reducing the amount of time the patient spends on the couch.
TrueBeam can treat cancers anywhere in the body, where radiation treatment is indicated, and opens the door to new possibilities for the treatment of challenging cases such as cancers in the lung, breast, abdomen, and head and neck as well as other cancers that are treatable with radiotherapy.
