A shorter and more targeted radiotherapy against cancer thanks to a unique machine in Italy, which allows a sort of 'blitzkrieg' against cancer.
A technological revolution that is already a reality in the Advanced Oncological Radiotherapy department at the IRCCS Sacro Cuore Don Calabria Hospital in Negrar (Verona), the only hospital in Italy, and among the 20 facilities in the world, equipped with this modern device (the MrLinac "Unity "), consisting of a linear accelerator and a high-field magnetic resonance.
In the fight against cancer there is therefore a new weapon: it could be compared to a sniper rifle with a built-in magnifying glass that makes images of the highest quality and definition available to the oncologist radiotherapist during treatment.
This allows to perfectly define the tumor site and to hit it with the utmost precision and with high doses of radiation, minimizing the involvement of healthy tissues, reducing radiotherapy sessions and ensuring an excellent quality of life.
With the new Unity device, so far no serious side effects have occurred and compared to traditional therapy the result is just as effective but with fewer sessions: an average of only 5 appointments allows excellent results, faster than traditional radiotherapy schemes that can on the other hand, it can even exceed 40 sessions, as in the case of prostate cancer.
With the new system, prostate tumors, lymph node metastases, bone metastases in the pelvis and abdomen, as well as the thoracic and recently the cerebral district have been treated.In just under a year of activity, over 1000 performances have been completed at Negrar, out of 102 patients with prostate cancer and 59 with metastases from other cancers.
This earned the hospital's team of radio-oncological researchers three scientific publications over the course of a few months: in Radiation Oncology, in Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology and in Acta Oncologica, which show that the treatment is not only shorter. and precise but also well tolerated for all age groups, including the elderly and frail for concomitant pathologies.
Until now, with conventional systems, "precisely due to the natural movement of the organs, we were forced to irradiate a wider area than the tumor, and with lower doses in order not to damage portions of healthy tissue necessarily involved - explains Filippo Alongi, director of the department of Advanced Oncological Radiotherapy by Negrar and professor of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Brescia - Thanks to the use of high resolution magnetic resonance images before and during each session, we can target high doses of radiation with millimeter precision, such as to neutralize cells. cancer, and proposing more and more treatment protocols with fewer sessions than conventional radiotherapy ".
"The revolutionary machinery - continues Alongi - allows the radiation beams to be adapted in real time during the same session, based on the position of the tumor target that changes due to the natural movement of the organs, such as the prostate, for example. the limits of traditional radiotherapy in which the treatment plan is decided on 'day zero' and always remains the same ".
