University of Florida Physicians Are First to Deliver Stereotactic Radiosurgery Treatments Using Trilogy Tx(TM) From
Varian Medical Systems
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Monday July 31, 8:00 am ET
Eight Patients Receive Ultra-Precise Radiosurgical Treatments for a Range of Neurological Conditions on First Day of Clinical Operation
GAINESVILLE, Fla., July 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Eight patients ranging in age from 21 to 69 were the first people in the world to be treated on a new, ultra-precise machine for non-invasive, image-guided radiosurgery (IGRS) at Shands at the University of Florida. A leading neurosurgery team of UF faculty physicians at Shands used the new Trilogy Tx(TM) medical linear accelerator from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR) to treat three men and five women for conditions that included arteriovenous malformations, acoustic schwannomas, meningioma, and metastatic brain tumors.
Image-guided radiosurgery (IGRS) involves delivering precisely focused, high-energy radiation to a localized area in a single treatment session to destroy malignant or non-malignant tumors or to make other medical repairs that cannot be addressed by conventional surgery.
"Trilogy is the first machine that is engineered for delivering these types of treatments," said Frank Bova, PhD, UF College of Medicine professor of neurosurgery, who collaborated with William A. Friedman, MD, UF College of Medicine chairman and professor of neurosurgery, to deliver the treatments. "It is an order of magnitude more accurate than our previous machine. It allows us to target with much more confidence, to reduce our treatment margins, to get closer to critical structures near the target and know that we'll be able to avoid them."
"The Trilogy Tx has eclipsed other technologies for delivering radiosurgery in the treatment of neurological disorders," said Friedman, who has treated thousands of patients with radiosurgery since 1988 and whose team contributed to the development of the new faster and more accurate treatment technology. "The Trilogy is more versatile, and it offers us an incredible dose rate, so these treatments go much faster than they did before," Friedman said.
Better targeting technology and shorter treatment times to improve patient comfort were major objectives for the medical team.
"As expected, the treatment times varied with the complexity of the cases. We were able to complete some of the simpler treatments in just seven minutes," Bova said. "If you include the time spent getting the patient into position and performing final checks, these treatments required only fifteen minutes. Similar treatments would often take 30-45 minutes, using older technology. That's a long time to lie still for treatment."
"We have long been convinced that linear accelerator (linac) technology would be the wave of the future for neurosurgery. Linac-based radiosurgery has come to full maturity with the Trilogy Tx," said Friedman, adding that the first day of neurosurgery treatments on the Trilogy Tx machine went exceptionally well. "We're very pleased," he said. "We find we can control 95 percent of acoustic schwannomas and meningiomas, 80-90 percent of the arteriovenous malformations, and 90 percent of the brain metastases we treat in this way. So we have every reason to expect excellent results for these patients." |
