February 22, 2005

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center has installed a new, more sophisticated way to deliver radiation treatments for cancer. The state’s first TomoTherapy HI-ART® System, is available at The Kirklin Clinic at Acton Road, located just off I-459.

“UAB is proud to be one of only a handful of health care institutions in the United States to offer this treatment system,” said Dr. James A. Bonner, chairman of the UAB Department of Radiation Oncology. “It allows us to provide 3-D imaging immediately prior to each radiation treatment in order to verify the specific location of the patient’s tumor. The system is unique in that it can both image and radiate the tumor without the patient having to change position.”

The system looks similar to a CT scanner. “Treatment planning, CT image-guided patient position, and treatment delivery are combined into an integrated system with TomoTherapy,” according to Dr. Jennifer De Los Santos, radiation oncologist at TKC at Acton Road.

“CT imaging allows us to accurately treat tumors with closer margins and to protect more of the normal tissue. Because normal tissue receives less radiation with this system, side effects of therapy may be less than with other forms of radiation therapy,” she said.”

Cancers that can be treated with the new system include prostate, spinal, brain, head-and-neck tumors. TomoTherapy also is suitable for patients who have had prior radiation therapy.

The TomoTherapy HI-ART system “is especially useful when a tumor wraps around or has a concave relationship with sensitive normal tissue,” De Los Santos said, “because it includes a sophisticated form of IMRT — intensity-modulated radiotherapy.”

IMRT, part of UAB’s radiation oncology program for five years, targets the tumor with optimal levels of radiation while minimizing the dose to healthy areas. The radiation treatment beam projects into the tumor continuously as the gantry ring rotates around the patient, rather than the conventional radiation method of projecting from a limited number of fixed beams. TomoTherapy physicians can adjust the size, shape and intensity of the radiation beam to target the treatment to the individual size, shape and location of the patient’s tumor.

Some UAB radiation patients may be able to take advantage of proposed clinical trials that might increase the tumor dose in some cases or decrease the number of times that a patient may need to come for treatment, De Los Santos said.

For more information, go to the Web at www.uabmedicine.org/conditions-and-services/image-guided-radiotherapy-technology-tomotherapy.