Delivering a Personalized Service and Preserving the Patients Quality of Life.

Thu, Jun 13th 2013, 11:30 AM

The spine is the most common site for skeletal metastases (metastases is the spread of cancer cells from their original site to other regions in the body), representing a common problem which affects more than 100,000 people a year in the US alone. It is estimated that over 20,000 of these patients will develop spinal cord compression from this. For many years, conventional radiation therapy has been the mainstay of treatment for patients with metastatic spinal tumors. Unfortunately, the high toxicity encountered has been a significant limitation of this approach. The use of spinal stereotactic body radiation therapy, for short “spinal SBRT”, in the management of spinal and paraspinal primary and metastatic tumors has decreased toxicity, representing a natural extension of the principles of intracranial radiosurgery. However, in comparison to intracranial radiosurgery,spinal SBRT commonly requires larger treatment volumes in proximity to numerous organs at risk, combined with the inability to utilize rigid, frame-based immobilization. All these factors contribute to the substantially morecomplex nature of spinal SBRT.

Why choose Spinal SBRT?

Beyond the convenience of a shorter duration of treatment, spinal radiosurgery affords to deliver a greater biological equivalent dose to a lesion than conventional radiotherapy fractionation schemes. This translates into a much higher tumor control and fast pain relief for the patients. The minimally invasive nature of this approach is consistent with recent trends in open spinal surgery and helps to maintain or improve a patient's quality of life.Spinal radiosurgery has expanded the resources available for neurosurgical treatment for patients with spinal and paraspinal metastasis.

“Spinal and paraspinal metastases are common complications in late cancer. The incidence of spinal metastasis is increasing because patients are living longer and chemotherapy is getting better. -Says Dr. Beatriz Amendola, Radiation Oncologist and director of the Innovative Cancer Center (ICI) in Miami, Florida. “In comparison with other treatment options, Spinal SBRT is not only a more advanced and accurate treatment for patients, but most importantly is the increase in quality of life that the patient is able to have during this treatment time.” -Affirms Dr. Amendola.

Spinal SBRT Treatment

By definition, SBRT is delivered in 1 to 5 fractions. This hypofractionated scheme (a dosage of radiation that is divided into several large doses that are given every few days) has been successful in the management of benign and malignant tumors of the spine. This emerging modality of treatment can be safely used, not only for management of primary tumors, but also for metastatic disease.

The INNOVATIVE CANCER INSTITUTE has been chosen as one of the Top Cancer Centers in 2013 for making a difference not only in patient lives but also for being one step ahead of others in this specialty. This center,located in South Florida, will be featured in the Imaging Technology News magazine.

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