RADIATION

Cleary earned a degree at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and did his residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The thing I like about working as a radiation oncologist,” he says, “is that I see patients over a long enough period of time that I get to know them as people and build a relationship with them.”

Before radiation therapy, a patient meets with Cleary to discuss treatment and a plan is formulated. If a tumor is particularly troublesome, Cleary can present the case at the daily “Tumor Board” held by area doctors to discuss particular cases and benefit from one another’s experience.

Once Cleary has worked out a plan for a patient, he goes over the details with the radiation technicians who are trained to operate the Truebeam.

The Truebeam is housed in a room with a door and walls a foot thick and lined with lead. Cameras are mounted around the walls to keep an eye on the patient. The TrueBeam is programmed to a minute level of sensitivity, to the point that it can fashion beams of radiation that fit the size and shape of a tiny tumor. The machine can rotate completely around the patient. A medical physicist on staff monitors the machine to make sure it delivers the proper amount of radiation.

Cleary says that yet another advantage to the Varian TrueBeam is that it reduces the amount of time radiation

treatments take. “A patient can be in and out, from the moment they walk through the front door, in 20 or 30 minutes. It’s much faster than options in the past.”

CHI Memorial marketing representative Karen Long says that Rees Skillern Cancer Institute will be adding chemotherapy treatment to its services in the near future.