There’s a good reason why Scully-Welsh Cancer Center radiation oncologist Dr. Stuart Byer and Dustin Boring, the manager of radiation therapy at the Vero facility, are smiling.
Actually, there are a lot of good reasons and they all begin on the center’s ground floor with the massive TrueBeam STx stereotactic radiosurgery system.
The what?
The TrueBeam STx stereotactic radiosurgery system.
That is a brand name used by the Varian Medical Corporation, the manufacturer of the system’s various components.
The word “stereotactic” denotes the use of 3-D imaging in mapping, targeting and delivering cancer therapy.
Radiosurgery, as defined by the American Cancer Society, is a “therapy that uses high-energy particles or waves, such as X-rays, gamma rays, electron beams or protons to destroy or damage cancer cells.”
That alone should delight anyone in the field of radiation oncology. But Boring and Byer wanted more.
And they got it.
Most modern radiotherapy systems direct their radiation beams at specific tumors rather than the body as a whole, but the STx does so from multiple directions and angles with the ability to use more than one beam at a time and it does so with impressive accuracy.
But one problem, as Byer points out, is that any patient is basically a moving target.
Even the simple and relatively passive act of breathing changes a patient’s position ever so slightly and since the goal is to deliver radiation only to the tumor and not to the healthy tissue surrounding it, three dimensional planning wasn’t quite good enough.
Byer cites Scully-Welsh physicist James Atherton, Ph.D., as the one who implemented a fourth dimension, time, to an already complicated algorithm; now treatment planning is capable of compensating for the movement that’s inherent in patients simply taking air in and then letting it out again.
Then, too, back in 2014 Boring estimated that many patient treatment sessions might last “only 15 minutes” but now, thanks to greater familiarity with both the hardware and software, 17 months of operating experience along with a software update from Varian, some sessions last as little as five to 10 minutes.
Moreover, what once might have been a six-week daily course of radiotherapy, according to Boring, can now be accomplished with greater accuracy and efficiency in a single treatment.
Boring boasted back in 2014 that Varian Medical projected the STx would deliver its radiation beam to within a mere 1.5 millimeters of a targeted tumor but that’s not how it turned out.
Byers says “1.5 millimeters is bad for us now. We’re now to within one millimeter or less.”
The system, the experience and the software update have also opened the door to SABR – or stereotactic ablative radiotherapy.
Stanford University calls SABR the “treatment of choice” for treating tumors throughout the body, including the head and neck, thorax, abdomen (liver, pancreas, adrenal), pelvis and bone.
Since Scully-Welsh is still one of only four medical facilities in the entire state of Florida equipped with the TrueBeam STx stereotactic radiosurgery system, Boring and Byer see even more potential on the horizon.
Both Boring and Byer enthusiastically applaud the cancer center’s administration and the board for what they call their unqualified support saying, “They’ve given us everything we’ve asked for.”
Byer also talks about the “teamwork” involved citing the center’s monthly thoracic cancer conferences with Vero area oncologists and surgeons and the center’s continuing affiliation with Duke Medicine as important building blocks for the fledgling Scully-Welsh cancer program.
In fact, both Byer and Boring just returned from a trip to Durham, N.C., for talks and meetings with the Duke Medical Center’s oncology department.
Meanwhile, Boring estimates that the Scully-Welsh TrueBeam team has already helped treat more than 300 local cancer patients.
Installed well before the $48 million cancer center opened its doors to the general public, the high-tech TrueBeam cancer-killer that Louisville’s Norton Cancer Institute calls “the latest and most advanced technology in the world for treating cancer” has already met and exceeded all of Byer’s expectations. So much so that he quickly adds, “I just can’t wait to come to work each morning.”
The Scully-Welsh Cancer Center is at 1000 36th Street in Vero Beach, directly behind the Indian River Medical Center. The phone number is 772-563-HOPE or 772-563-4673.
