Source: Yahoo Press Release 

AHMEDABAD, Gujarat, India, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Cancer patients in the Indian state of Gujarat can now receive state-of-the-art image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) treatments using equipment from Varian Medical Systems with the opening of a new radiation oncology center at Apollo Hospital, Ahmedabad. On Thursday, August 24, clinicians delivered the first IGRT treatment at the center to a prostate cancer patient in his 70s.

The new facility was established through an alliance between the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center (CBCC) of Bakersfield, California, USA, and Apollo Hospital Groups, one of the largest healthcare groups in South and South East Asia.

The CBCC facility at Apollo Hospital is the first treatment center in South Asia to offer IGRT using a treatment system that combines imaging and treatment technologies on a single machine. Radiation is delivered using Varian’s Clinac® iX linear accelerator equipped with an On-Board Imager(TM) device for imaging and tumor tracking.

“This is a great moment for cancer care in India,” said Gitesh Patel, CBCC’s vice president for business development. “We are offering Indian cancer patients the same standards of care that we offer to our patients in the U.S. That meant outfitting the Indian center with Varian’s cutting edge technology for efficient delivery of accurate and precise image-guided radiation therapy treatments,” said Ravi Patel, MD, founder of CBCC.

According to Vivek Bansal, MD, radiation oncologist at Apollo Hospital Ahmedabad, the first patient is continuing treatment with daily radiotherapy sessions administered five days per week over a period of seven weeks. The treatment team uses the On-Board Imager prior to each treatment to precisely locate a set of gold markers that have been implanted into the patient’s prostate gland in order to accurately account for any changes in tumor position from day to day.

“The prostate moves around constantly due to normal physiological processes,” Bansal said. “With the On-Board Imager, we can detect very small displacements and make appropriate corrections. We use it in radiographic mode to detect the gold marker seeds and reposition the patient, and then we generate a three-dimensional cone-beam CT image to verify the accuracy of our positioning corrections.”

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