Hear from Dr. McDonald on how the CyberKnife S7 is unlocking new levels of speed for her practice
Dr. McDonald is a Consultant Clinical Oncologist specializing in the treatment of patients with lung cancer. She has both a private and an NHS practice at The Royal Marsden Hospital in the UK. Dr McDonald’s research aims to improve outcomes by developing individualized approaches to lung radiotherapy through integration of novel functional imaging and targeted biological agents with advanced radiotherapy technologies, including stereotactic/CyberKnife radiotherapy, intensity-modulated and image-guided adaptive radiotherapy.
Transcribed Text: The main type of cases that i’ve treated on the cyberknife system have been patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer this is routine standard of care to deliver stereotactic radiotherapy for patients who are considered inoperable or who aren’t keen on proceeding down the surgical route our clinical use on cyberknife in general is increasing because we’re seeing more indications coming through stereotactic radiotherapy i personally treat lung cancer and therefore as well as the early stage lung cancer patients we’re seeing more indication for treatment of oligometastatic disease in the various different settings and that’s not just the lung metastases that’s metastases from various sites around the body with increasing numbers of patients coming through for treatment so with the cyberknife system I particularly like using this as a solution for patients with certain types of oligometastasis so take for example adrenal metastases because we’re able to um insert fiducials and use the tracking system this really does give me confidence in the delivery accuracy particularly bearing in mind the close by normal tissues that were keen to avoid treating so in general as i say we’re seeing increased use of stereotactic radiotherapy for oligomets with increasing international data and more trials coming through and demonstrating the likely clinical benefit at the royal marsden we’re not only treating um metacrineus oligometastases routinely but we also have trials open looking at stereotactic radiotherapy in different settings for example synchronous oligometastases phenol small cell lung cancer and also in the oligo progressive setting for mutation positive patients with non-small cell lung cancer so with the new cyberknife 7 system the main benefit i see for patients is that the treatment time is much quicker for patients and particularly bearing in mind are patient demographic when we’re talking about early stage non-small cell lung cancer these patients tend to be fairly elderly and patient comfort is of paramount importance during treatment and therefore the faster the treatment the easier it is for patients to tolerate and their overall experience of treatment is optimal so to summarize the new cyberknife system if i were to give three words i would say speed precision and motion synchronization.
