Enloe receives new cancer treatment
Enloe Medical Center is now the third hospital in California to receive a new machine specializing in guided MRI radiation treatment. The hospital said Monday the new machine is expected significantly increase cancer treatment times.
The machine is located at the Enloe Regional Cancer Center at 265 Cohasset Road. Called an MRIdian Linear Accelerator, it is the first of its kind to combine an MRI with a linear accelerator, the tool used to deliver radiation therapy to the body to treat cancer.
Dr. Sun Yi, a radiation oncologist at Enloe Regional Cancer Center said the next nearest MRIdian is at UCLA Health in Los Angeles.
Yi added having a machine like the MRIdian at Enloe opens up a large amount of possibilities for cancer patients as the new developments change the way doctors can see tumors.
“Housing an MRI on the linear accelerator has never been done before prior to these machines coming into existence,” Yi said. “The other advantage of this is we can track the tumor in real time. The radiation beam will turn off and on if what we’re tracking, which is usually the tumor, falls outside of a specified boundary which we also set. It can do that as fast if not faster than then a human can. It does it within 200 milliseconds.”
Yi said the machine is a technological success in the cancer field. He added prior to the new MRIdian, the only way to see inside the body during radiation treatment was by inserting small metal clips near the tumor with the patient placed under an Xray which he called only a “surrogate.”
“With that, you weren’t actually seeing the tumor per se,” Yi said. “With this machine, you’re able to monitor what’s happening inside the body in real time.”
Although the price of the MRIdian, was not disclosed, Yi said if the hospital had purchased something in a similar price range, treatment would have been limited. With the new machine, it has the same functions as older models of treatment with new capabilities.
“Essentially, there are tumors that we couldn’t treat with as great fidelity as we could on the older units that we can now,” Yi said. “We can increase the dose where we couldn’t have before because it would be unsafe. And so that provides access for patients that otherwise wouldn’t be able to be treated with radiation for their cancer.”
The MRIdian can also potentially minimize trips to the hospital by being able to directly target specific areas of the body Yi said. He added day of treatment may be a longer process but for those living a considerable distance from the hospital, he hopes it will be helpful.
“Usually radiation is delivered over many weeks, sometimes months, and there’s a real push towards consolidating a treatment to fewer and fewer treatments. You really can only do that if you’re more and more sure about where you’re hitting,” Yi said. “But when something where you can see the tumor, track it and turn it off the beam within milliseconds, it gives you a lot more reassurance that you can give big doses that you would normally deliver in many weeks in just a single treatment. You’re going from two months of treatment every day to a couple of treatments over usually the course of a week or two.”
Future advancements on the machine are expected, with Yi comparing the ability to upgrade the software to frequent iPhone updates.
The new machine began operations Aug. 16 with Yi stating despite the advances, the hospital is moving ahead slowly to make sure safety precautions are considered.
“It’s a pioneering advancement. We’re ahead of most university centers. Clearly, we’re going to take an abundance of caution. We’re not going to do things haphazardly and we want to do things on sort of a research protocol, if you will, so that we can monitor how well we’re doing,” Yi said. “We’re not just being cowboy on the prairie, so to speak. We’re doing this in a comprehensive and thoughtful way.”