Advances in stereotactic body radiosurgery (SBRT) have helped make cancer treatment safer and more effective. SBRT is an an advanced form of radiation therapy that has great success in treatments of lung, brain and now prostate cancer.
Unlike traditional surgery, which involves incisions, SBRT uses 3D imaging to target high doses of radiation to the affected area with minimal impact on the surrounding healthy tissue. SBRT resembles other forms of radiation by eliminating the DNA of the targeted cancer cells, causing them to lose the ability to reproduce and thereby shrinking tumors.
Depending on the stage of a patient’s prostate cancer and other factors, SBRT radiation therapy can be a very effective treatment.
VMAT/IMRT is one of the most common type of external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer. This advanced technology provides optimally precise radiation therapy to the prostate while effectively limiting any adverse effects to surrounding normal structures. To achieve this high level of safety, VMAT/IMRT varies the intensity of radiation beams, allowing stronger doses to reach specific areas of the tumor.
At the Center for Cancer Care at Griffin Hospital, VMAT/IMRT is taken to the next level in precision and safety with the addition of Image-Guided Radiation therapy (IGRT). The combination of IMRT with IGRT is the most advanced and patient-centered treatment option available. IGRT provides an accurate location of a patient’s prostate during treatment. This technology is vitally important to prostate cancer radiation therapy because the prostate gland can vary in position due variations in the size of the bladder and rectum. This technology tracks the location of the prostate and the surrounding organs before each radiation dose is delivered, allowing for more effective doses of radiation to be accurately delivered to the cancer while minimizing radiation to normal tissues including the rectum, bladder or bowel.
For more information about stereotactic body radiosurgery (SBRT) or prostate cancer at The Center for Cancer Care, visit griffinhealth.org/cancer.