Manipal Hospital's Comprehensive Cancer Centre Department of Radiation Oncology has commissioned Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), state-of-the-art equipment used for treatment of cancer patients.

This powerful computer programme ADAC, has been specially procured and installed at Manipal Hospital for the IMRT programme. The entire system costs $2 million comprises of a modern Linear Accelerator equipped with a special device called multi leaf collimator having 80 leaves and an amorphous silicon Portal Vision. It allows to deliver radiations much more precisely than is possible with conventional radiation therapy.

The equipment delivers high dose of radiation directly to cancer cells in a "targeted" way, was inaugurated by Dr. A. M. Nisar Syed, Director of Radiation Oncology, Memorial Medical Centre, California, USA.

ADAC optimizes a treatment plan based on physician's dose instructions and information about tumour size, shape and location in the body. The multi leaf collimator shapes the radiation beam and delivers the radiation in accordance with the treatment plan such that surrounding healthy tissues are maximally spared.

IMRT is useful for a wide variety of cancers that are extremely common in India. These include head and neck cancer, cancer of the cervix, lung cancer, brain tumours, prostate cancer and gastrointestinal cancers. It has revolutionized radiation therapy and has made it possible to treat tumours that might have been considered untreatable in past due to close proximity to vital organs and structures," said Dr. Sanjiv Sharma, Head - Radiotherapy, Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre, Manipal Hospital.

The therapy is an advanced mode of high-precision radiotherapy that utilizes computer-controlled x-ray accelerators to deliver precise radiation doses to a cancerous tumour or specific areas within the tumour. With IMRT, the radiation beam can be broken up into many beamlets and intensity of each beamlet can be adjusted individually. This makes it possible to limit the radiation received by normal tissues that are near the tumour resulting in drastic reduction in the incidence of side effects. In some situations, this may allow a higher dose of radiation to be delivered to the tumour, thereby increasing the chances of cure.

Radiation therapy, including IMRT, stops cancer cells from dividing and growing, thus slowing tumour growth. In many cases, radiation therapy is capable of killing cancer cells, thus shrinking or eliminating tumours.