MakatiMed introduces new cancer radiation treatment

MANILA, Philippines - True to its mission to save and provide relief to cancer patients, the Makati Medical City (MMC) has introduced a new cutting-edge radiation treatment for cancer that is the first of its kind in the Philippines.

Dr. Kathleen Baldivia, head of MMC’s Radiation Oncology Section, said the TomoTherapy treatment is the latest form of image-guided radiation therapy that uses an integrated computed tomography (CT) scan system.

Unlike the conventional radiation therapy machines that deliver a wide beam of radiation from only a few angles, TomoTherapy machines produce “precise targeted radiation beams, 360 degrees around a patient.”

“With TomoTherapy, before a patient is treated each day, we can actually see where the tumor is located. It’s capable of what we call ‘image driven radiation therapy.’ We can visualize where the tumor is from that day so we can do daily customized adjustments prior to each treatment. That’s how safe it is,” Baldivia said in a recent press briefing.

Resembling a CT scan machine, the TomoTherapy system’s radiation beam is subdivided into beamlets. This allows doctors to adjust the intensity of the radiation in each beamlet, thus producing varying doses across a treatment area.

“You have the highest dose for the tumor and the lowest dose to surrounding normal organs… I think the advantage of TomoTherapy is that it reduces toxicity because we can see the area to be treated every day. If you are able to reduce toxicity to the normal tissues, eventually it may be able to translate into better response, higher survival rate. That’s one of the big potential to this type of treatment,” Baldivia said.

According to a fact sheet provided by MMC, the machine was first introduced for clinical use at the University of Wisconsin in the United States in 2003.

It “follows on the heels of radiation treatment methods that have attempted to target tumors found in specific areas of a patient’s body and reduce, if not avoid all together, radiation dose to otherwise healthy tissues surrounding the tumors,” it said.

Patients usually undergo treatment for 10 to 28 days with one session each day. Each session lasts for five to 10 minutes depending on the body parts being treated.

The TomoTherapy treatment is “non-invasive and as painless as having a CT scan or having an X-ray examination.”

And with its flexibility and undeniable accuracy, the system “addresses almost all types of cancers, from irregularly shaped tumors to long treatment fields like multiple tumor along the spin, or multiple tumors in the brain.”

“TomoTherapy is a perfect fusion of image-guided technology and radiation treatment… We should not treat what we cannot see and over the last number of decades, the challenge to us is — how can we be sure that radiation beam is reaching the tumor? How can the harm to other tissues be minimal? The Tomo machine (was) designed to address this need,” Baldivia said.

She admitted that there is no guarantee that cancer cells will not recur in patients who underwent TomoTherapy.

“The patient may have more disease elsewhere that were undocumented or did not respond to treatment completely or he develops another type of cancer which happens to other patients. So there is really no 100 percent guarantee that cancer will never come back because there are many causes,” she added.

But at least, Baldivia said, “We are obliged to be able to deliver the most complete treatment possible, at the same time, reduce side effects. So the more complete treatment the patient has, we can see good survival.”

She added that chemotherapy may be on top of mind when it comes to cancer treatment but with the TomoTherapy system, “patients will finally learn to appreciate the importance and efficacy of radiation.”

“It’s a big part of most cancer treatment. In fact for some cancers, it’s the main treatment, not surgery nor chemotherapy which is given in many advanced cases. Radiation is also used to relieve symptoms, thus improving a patient’s quality of life. I think radiation is here to stay for the majority of our cancer patients,” Baldivia said.