St. Luke’s Medical Center–Quezon City has introduced the Philippines’ first TrueBeam Edge radiotherapy system, expanding access to advanced cancer treatment within the country.
Manufactured by Varian, a Siemens Healthineers company, the TrueBeam Edge is a system that integrates imaging, beam delivery, motion management, and patient positioning right into a single platform, enabling sub-millimeter precision radiation therapy for a big selection of cancers.
“This has been a piece in progress for the past couple of years,” St. Luke’s Medical Center President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis P. Serrano said throughout the launch on Friday.
The system sets a brand new benchmark for cancer treatment within the Philippines by bringing technologies previously available only in select international cancer centers to Filipino patients.
The TrueBeam Edge features sub-millimeter precision targeting, an intelligent multileaf collimator (MLC) that shapes radiation beams to match tumor contours, advanced motion management and respiratory gating, stereotactic radiosurgery for complex brain tumors and multiple metastases, image-guided radiotherapy for real-time treatment verification, high-dose rate delivery for shorter treatment sessions, and a patient positioning system for accurate patient alignment.
St. Luke’s Medical Center Department of Radiation Oncology Head Kenneth Sy said the brand new technology significantly reduces treatment time, allowing doctors to treat more tumors in a single session.
“We make procedures which might be very tactical, and it is dependent upon what type of lesion you may have. One lesion will take 20 to half-hour. We expect this machine to take lower than 6 minutes for one lesion. So now it enables us to treat more lesions as well. So as a substitute of just going to, we will go to possibly 8 or 9 in a single sitting,” Mr. Sy said during an interview with the media.
Radiation oncologist Frances Lily L. Peñano said the system also shortens the general course of radiation therapy.
“The delivery of radiation shall be faster. The time spent in treatment shall be shorter. And we will shorten the treatments… If it’s not for, let’s say, 6 weeks, we will shorten it to 1-3 weeks,” Ms. Peñano said.
Mr. Sy said the technology also enables higher radiation doses for smaller tumors while maintaining treatment accuracy.
“The technical a part of it’s, if you may have larger lesions, for instance, it just takes a bit longer. However the limitation is we lower the dose. Whereas with the smaller lesions, we will really go after it with higher doses. And the advantage of that is, in a single sitting, you’ll be able to just keep the entire thing,” Mr. Sy said.
Because the only facility within the country equipped with the TrueBeam Edge, St. Luke’s–Quezon City said the technology allows patients to receive highly specialized stereotactic radiotherapy locally as a substitute of traveling abroad.
In response to the hospital, the system improves treatment precision while minimizing damage to healthy tissue, shortens treatment sessions, enhances safety through real-time tumor tracking, and expands treatment options for complex and hard-to-treat cancers, including stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT).
Ms. Peñano said most magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guided treatments are covered by PhilHealth, while patients receiving more advanced radiation treatments should still must pay a part of the associated fee.
“For many of our MRI treatments, it’s covered by PhilHealth. But for the more advanced radiation treatments, a part of it remains to be covered by PhilHealth, but possibly there’s a pay-off for the patient,” Ms. Peñano said.
She added that uncomfortable side effects vary depending on the treatment site but are reduced with newer technologies.
“So the uncomfortable side effects of the radiation treatment would depend upon the realm we’re treating. So often, the consequences are confined to this area exposed to radiation. But after all, with the newer technologies, we will lessen the uncomfortable side effects. So for instance, if we’re treating a tumor in the pinnacle region, the patient can have dryness of the mouth, allergies, difficulties in swallowing. And if it’s within the pelvic region, it could possibly be diarrhea,” Ms. Peñano said.
Mr. Sy said treatment plans undergo strict safety checks to make sure radiation doses remain inside protected limits.
“There are constraints that we work on and we don’t cross that. So, we all the time work under the curve. Meaning, we don’t give doses higher that may cause symptoms or eventual morbidity within the participation… So, we make sure that that every little thing passes and every little thing is protected for the patient before we even try to start out,” Mr. Sy said.
“I hope that the doctors are glad with the acquisition of the TrueBeam linear accelerator. I hope that that may translate into faster throughput, more patients served, higher outcomes, and again, higher satisfaction for our patients,” Mr. Serrano said.
Mr. Sy said the TrueBeam Edge technology may also be available at St. Luke’s Medical Center–Global City in Taguig by around August this yr. — Kaizzer Angela Marie V. Manuba