NEW CANCER TREATMENT - TomoTherapy

nudgie · July 2008

WASHINGTON -- Doctors hope a new type of radiation therapy is giving more precise treatment to cancer patients.

It's called TomoTherapy. It's a radiation machine with a CT scanner. Patients are scanned before each treatment, allowing doctors to see whether the tumor is changing in size and precisely where to target the radiation.

"Every other way of treating cancers never looks. They have no way of knowing whether things shrink or when they shrink," said Sibley Hospital radiation oncologist, Dr. Greg Sibley.

Sibley said there are fewer complications with this system, because the radiation is focused strictly on killing tumor cells, leaving the healthy tissue surrounding the cancer alone.

For example, with prostate cancer, the radiation targets the prostate alone, avoiding any damage to adjoining organs like the bladder.

But TomoTherapy is only useful for "internal cancers." Those are cancers on the inside of the body, like prostate, lung, head and neck. It's not recommended for things like breast and skin cancers.

TOMOTHERAPY ARTICLE:

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews+articleid_2409534~title_TomoTherapy-Marks-Five.html

tootsie1 · July 2008

In August my son will begin studying in a radiation oncology program, to be an oncology technician. I'll be sure to ask him about this therapy.

Gail

nereidsbeware · July 2008

this sounds to something very similar (or possibly is exactly the same) to what my dad is starting up in about 2 weeks time.

they call it targeted radiation therapy (3DCRT - 3-D Conformal Radiotherapy).

my dad has tried two rounds of chemo, and when going to a hospital for a second opinion, the oncologist simply said to my parent's that using chemo for such an advanced form of CC is pretty much useless (which i don't know if it's true, or if he's exaggerating). but yeah.

sounds a lot more promising than conventional radiation therapy, that's for sure.

apache4 · July 2008

nereidsbeware said:
this sounds to something very similar (or possibly is exactly the same) to what my dad is starting up in about 2 weeks time.

they call it targeted radiation therapy (3DCRT - 3-D Conformal Radiotherapy).

my dad has tried two rounds of chemo, and when going to a hospital for a second opinion, the oncologist simply said to my parent's that using chemo for such an advanced form of CC is pretty much useless (which i don't know if it's true, or if he's exaggerating). but yeah.

sounds a lot more promising than conventional radiation therapy, that's for sure.

What stage, etc. is your Dad's cancer. That sounds like a pretty dramatic statement for an onocologist to make.

PGLGreg · July 2008

nereidsbeware said:
this sounds to something very similar (or possibly is exactly the same) to what my dad is starting up in about 2 weeks time.

they call it targeted radiation therapy (3DCRT - 3-D Conformal Radiotherapy).

my dad has tried two rounds of chemo, and when going to a hospital for a second opinion, the oncologist simply said to my parent's that using chemo for such an advanced form of CC is pretty much useless (which i don't know if it's true, or if he's exaggerating). but yeah.

sounds a lot more promising than conventional radiation therapy, that's for sure.

Yes, it does sound similar. Maybe what your parents' oncologist meant was that using chemo alone was useless, to encourage you to try the 3DCRT.
Good luck,
-Greg

nereidsbeware · September 2008

apache4 said:
What stage, etc. is your Dad's cancer. That sounds like a pretty dramatic statement for an onocologist to make.

yea, it seemed overly
yea, it seemed overly dramatic.

my dad is in stage iv, mets to the liver and his right hip bone hasn't been doing well either.

according to a second opinion, he only has months to live (with an emphasis on the fact that one year would be an incredibly stretch). but of course, with the many stories here, we all know we can't always take what the doctors say as 100% truths.

lisa42 · September 2008

nereidsbeware said:
yea, it seemed overly
yea, it seemed overly dramatic.

my dad is in stage iv, mets to the liver and his right hip bone hasn't been doing well either.

according to a second opinion, he only has months to live (with an emphasis on the fact that one year would be an incredibly stretch). but of course, with the many stories here, we all know we can't always take what the doctors say as 100% truths.

onc's statement off base!
Hi,

My opinion is definitely that the oncologist who gave your dad the 2nd opinion is old school and far too pessimistic! Don't these doctors know that telling someone they have just months to live is killing the patients- maybe literally! My oncologist (bless him!) has never given me the "you have such and such amount of time left to live" line. I guess I wouldn't want dishonesty, but if he had told me I had months or just a year to live, I know that I couldn't have been so positive & so determined to fight this as I have been! He also told me that there are many oncologists and surgeons who wouldn't have treated me just because I was stage IV. My original diagnosis was that I wasn't a surgical candidate because I had too many mets in both lungs & liver (12+ in liver). Because my oncologist took an aggressive approach and told me he expected me to do well (don't know if he really believed it- but that's what he told me & it made all the difference in the world to me)- well, I did do well. My mets in the liver reduced enough so I was able to have a liver resection this past May. I'm currently going through chemo a 2nd time because I have activity in my right lung again (oh- most all of it disappeared with my first 6 months of chemo & showed no activity at all on the PET then)
I wonder what the oncologists and surgeons like the one who spoke to your dad would have to say knowing how I did (and how many people do!)
Please tell your dad not to go by his advice & seek out doctors who are willing to be positive and even think outside the box. What have THEY got to lose except maybe beating the odds!

Best wishes to you and your dad!
Lisa

lisa42 · September 2008

cyberknife?
Hi Nudgie,

What have you heard about cyberknife in comparison to tomotherapy? I've heard about both, and they seem to be somewhat similar, both fairly new. I'm in San Diego & we have a couple of cyberknife centers nearby, but I've not heard of any tomotherapy centers nearby here. I educated myself on Cyberknife, since I had considered it prior to having my liver resection, but I don't know much at all about tomotherapy, except for hearing a few people mention it on blogs and sites like this.
What I learned about Cyberknife is that it is also an exact type of radiation, where feducials (a type of gold seed- not sure on the spelling) are implanted into the tumors themselves, which guide the radiation beams directly to the seeds. This allows more direct radiation on organs that move, such as the liver, without having the radiation affecting healthy tissue nearby.

I ended up deciding on having the liver surgery this past May instead of the cyberknife when I was told by the liver surgeon that, during surgery, he could actually physically examine my liver with a handheld ultrasound device & that sometimes he even discovers growths and tumors that never were seen on any scans. Turns out, I'm glad I went with the surgery- I did, indeed, have three additional tumors discovered during surgery, which never had shown up on any scans, CT or PET. When I asked him later how that could be possible, he said it does happen sometimes when the tumors are near the surface of the liver & aren't very dense.
We originally thought he was going to remove three tumors, but turned out I had six. The additional ones would never have been discovered if I had skipped the surgery & gone with the cyberknife.
Lisa

NEW CANCER TREATMENT - TomoTherapy

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