SILCHAR, May 4 � Chunnial Dey, 63, of Kolkata was suffering from lung cancer. After chemotherapy, there was no improvement in his condition. He was counting his last days, but the robot radiotherapy procedure, which is known as cyberknife, gave a new lease of life to him. This was stated by Dr Somrat Bhattacharjee, radio oncologist of Health Care Global Enterprise Ltd, Bangalore in a press conference held here recently .
Dr Bhattacharjee said that two patients from Silchar, who are under cyberknife treatment, are in a stable condition. Cyberknife offers patients new hope for the treatment of tumours and lesions, including ones that have been previously diagnosed as inoperable or untreatable with existing technology. Cyberknife uses state-of-the-art real-time image guidance, similar to cruise missile technology, to precisely target tumours anywhere in the body with pinpoint accuracy and delivers high doses of radiation.
Briefing newsmen, Bhattacharjee said that the cyberknife robotic radio surgery system is a completely non-invasive technique which serves as an alternative to treat both benign and cancerous tumours in the spine, pancreas, kidney, brain, lung and liver. Extreme doses of radiation are put into the cancer cells with high degree of precision. More than 50,000 patients have been successfully treated with the cyberknife technology. There are around 150 cyberknife systems across the globe.
Cyberknife is able to track, locate and detect the radiation from a number of angles. The technique, by using the latest image guidance cameras and cyber technology, is able to overcome the drawbacks of the conventional frame-based radio surgery systems like gamma knife and Linac-managed X-knife.
In most cases, cancer can be a very prolonged and painful experience. The Apollo Speciality Cancer Hospital has now introduced the cyberknife treatment, the latest treatment in the field of cancer cure. With the advent of the procedure, cancer treatment is a secure, highly successful and accurate procedure. This has made cyberknife a high successful non-invasive replacement for conventional surgery, Dr Bhattacharjee added.
The cyberknife system allows patients to breathe normally and relax comfortably during treatment. Some forms of radio surgery require rigid head-frames that are screwed into the patient�s skull to minimize any movement.
The cyberknife system does not require such extreme procedures to keep patients in place and instead relies on sophisticated tracking software, allowing for a much more comfortable and non-invasive treatment.
