Northeastern Pennsylvania cancer patients who need radiation therapy are benefiting from one of medicine's most sophisticated and advanced radiation techniques: Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT)

Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) and its three-dimensional imaging system permit physicians at RMS to actually “see” a malignant tumor during treatment. This allows for improved accuracy and precision of the radiation beam, while sparing more of the surrounding tissue and vital organs. This is especially important for patients whose cancers may have previously been untreatable.

Conventional Treatment
For many types of cancer, radiation therapy combined with surgery and/or chemotherapy can improve the long-term survival rate and significantly reduce the likelihood of the cancer coming back. In radiation therapy, the challenge has always been to give a high enough dose to the tumor to be effective, while protecting as much of the surrounding, healthy tissue as possible. One problem is that tumors can move because of a patient’s breathing, heartbeat or other causes.

The current method for locating a tumor uses CT scans prior to treatment. But since that location may change during weeks of treatments, a “safety margin” of healthy tissue is also subject to radiation. Because this healthy tissue will be impacted, radiation must be decreased to a less effective dose. And in some cases, if the margin includes vital organs or body structures such as the liver or spinal cord, radiation may not even be an option.

IGRT Offers Greater Precision
IGRT is helping physicians and researchers approach and tackle the major problem left in radiation therapy, which is how to handle tumor movement. The benefits of IGRT are many, and include:

• Safely delivering higher, more effective doses of radiation
• Offering new hope to patients with formerly “untreatable” tumors, such as those next to a vital organ or other hard-to-reach areas
• Reducing the safety margin and helping to protect surrounding tissue  
• Shortening the overall treatment period
• Reducing side effects and improving quality of life for patients 
  For more information about Image Guided Radiation Therapy,
  please phone RMS at: 570-714-8686