Radiotherapy
Advanced treatment centres
Latest medical technologies
Private medical centres
There have been many advances on conventional radiotherapy in recent years, particularly in the introduction of image guided treatments, and there are many competing proprietary technologies.  We list here a few of these that are in use at the advanced treatment centres today.
Trilogy stereotactic radiotherapy
Trilogy® radiotherapy 
 
With the Trilogy® radiotherapy system, the width of the radiation beam can be adapted to the volume of the tumour and it also has 'stereotactic' abilities in some body areas.  This enables it to fix the location of the tumour before and during each treatment session. 
The tumour can therefore be targeted more accurately than with conventional radiotherapy.  Not only does this reduce damage to surrounding healthy tissue, but it enables greater power to be used, which shortens each treatment session.
Trilogy stereotactic radiotherapy
TomoTherapy HiArt radiotherapy
TomoTherapy®  Hi-Art® system
 
The ring gantry-based TomoTherapy® platform combines integrated CT imaging with conformal radiation therapy to deliver sophisticated radiation treatments with speed and precision while reducing radiation exposure to surrounding healthy tissue.
The Hi·Art® treatment system delivers helical (continuous 360º) IMRT (image guided radiotherapy that uses tens of thousands of narrow beamlets, all targeting the tumour and individually optimised to contribute to the total required dose.
TomoTherapy HiArt system
Radiotherapy is now a very common form of treatment for many forms of cancer, either alone or in conjunction with surgery or other treatments, but there is a wide variety of types of radiotherapy available.
External radiotherapy is usually applied over several weeks, but still some patients prefer to travel for treatment.  There are two main reasons for this.
External radiotherapy
■ Advanced radiotherapy systems target tumours more accurately, reducing the impact on the surrounding tissue.
■
In many countries patients report long delays for radiotherapy, and this can even apply for private patients.  No-one likes to have to wait when they have cancer, but centres like Klinik Hirslanden in Zurich, Switzerland offer radiotherapy almost immediately.  In practice this means that radiotherapy can start as soon as you can arrange to be there.
These are two example of new generation radiotherapy devices, found in advanced treatment centres today, but there are others.
Intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT)
Originally developed with brain tumours in mind, this is now more commonly used for breast cancer.  Treatment is given in a single dose during open surgery, directly to the tumour bed, rather than through the skin and intervening tissue some time after the operation.
Intrabeam radiotherapy
Intrabeam®
This not only saves radiation burn and damage to healthy tissue but can also cut weeks from conventional external radiotherapy by delivering 20-30% of the total required radiation in a single dose.
Visit the IORT for Breast Cancer page for more details of breast treatments.  Intraoperative radiotherapy is also used for other soft tissue sarcomas such as rectum, stomach, pancreas, kidney and gynaecological tumours.
Specialist treatments    <    Radiotherapy
Advanced Radiotherapy Centres
Radiosurgery
This is very different to radiotherapy.  Radiosurgery uses radiation beams of much higher power and greater precision than radiotherapy, with the result that treatments can be reduced to as little as a single session of 45-90 minutes.
Frameless CyberKnife radiosurgery
CyberKnife®
The leading system of radiosurgery is CyberKnife® and we have a separate web site dedicated to this and providing an on-line enquiry form for a choice of centres.  CyberKnife is not suitable for all tumours but it can be the only form of treatment available for complex tumours in sensitive locations and it may offer an alternative to open surgery.
Visit the CyberKnife page for more details
Even with advanced tumours or the recurrence of a tumour following radiotherapy, brachytherapy offers patients considerable advantages.  It may be used alone or in conjunction with traditional radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy.
Brachytherapy therefore allows a higher radiation dose to be administered in the shortest possible time. The total duration of  treatment is, in general, reduced from six weeks to one week. A further advantage is the significantly lower radiation exposure of patients compared to traditional radiotherapy.
Brachytherapy
Here the radiation source is placed in direct contact with the tumour.  The advantage is that the radiation takes effect directly in the malignant tissue. This means that the fall-off of in the radiation dose in the surrounding tissue is much higher than with external radiotherapy.
Brachytherapy
Visit the Cancer Treatment Centres page, which also covers centres offering surgical and medical oncology options.
scan for radiosurgery
Ion-beam therapy is an extension of proton therapy where, in addition to protons, ions of carbon, oxygen and helium are used.  These carry much greater mass, so scattering of the beam is greatly reduced and high doses of destructive radiation can be delivered with unprecedented accuracy
Total radiation delivered can therefore be up to 20% higher than with conventional radiotherapy and this difference can be sufficient to kill some tumours which otherwise resist and survive radiotherapy.
Ion-Beam Therapy
Proton Therapy
Compared to conventional photon radiotherapy, protons (ions of hydrogen)  carry much greater mass and the beam has an entirely different penetration profile within the body.  Whereas photon radiation passes through the target area and continues with gradually reducing intensity, passing out of the body the other side, proton therapy treatment beams deliver most of their energy to the target area with very little penetration beyond.  This protects adjacent sensitive tissue and structures
Proton therapy centres are extremely expensive to build (they can cost over USD 100m) and there are only a few around the world, though various manufacturers are working on systems that will reduce this cost substantially, making proton therapy more widely available.
MHL does not yet feature any proton therapy centres but we hope to offer this service shortly.
Trilogy radiotherapy
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