Yashoda Cancer Institute becomes the first hospital in India to successfully treat a patient suffering with inoperable lung cancer with 4-Dimensional Gated Stereotactic Body Radiosurgery using RapidArc technology.

Specialists at Yashoda Cancer Institute were successfully able to treat 65-year-old Balaram Murthy's lung cancer with the Stereotactic Body Radiosurgery. Murthy was diagnosed with non small cell lung cancer, with a 2.5 cm tumor in the right middle lobe, this meant the tumor moved extensively during breathing and required 4-D Respiratory gating to predict tumour movements in all dimensions. An acute cardiac disease further complicated his case, making him unsuitable for invasive surgery. The follow up HD-PET scan showed a complete eradication of the tumour without any side effects.

Conventional radiotherapy techniques are delivered over 25 to 30 sessions at more than 30 minutes per session. The new method of radiosurgery is completely non-invasive and it involves delivering the full dose of radiation in as little as one to three treatments of ten minutes each. Instead of five to six weeks, the patient's treatment can be completed in just one week. The new method of radiosurgery is superior to conventional radiation therapy and equivalent to surgery.

According to experts, radiosurgery might become an alternative to invasive surgery for a large number of patients in the near future. The team of radiation oncologists at Yashoda Cancer Institute has now successfully implemented this treatment for another patient of early stage lung cancer and few more patients of pancreatic, liver and gall bladder cancers.

Commenting on the achievement, Dr G S Rao, managing director of Yashoda Hospitals, said, "RapidArc technology along with 4D CT Gating technology enables physicians to trace the exact position of lung tumours and upper abdominal tumours, even while the patient is breathing. This kind of precision is impossible to achieve with the conventional CT technology that is commonly available."

Yashoda Cancer Institute has achieved yet another milestone with the successful treatment of 500 cancer patients with RapidArc technology. The Institute was the first in Asia to be equipped with Varian's RapidArc Linear Accelerator and the most sophisticated three dimensional treatment planning systems.

Lung cancer is the single most devastating cause of cancer related deaths with approximately 1.5 million cases reported world wide and more than 1.3 million deaths in a calendar year. In India, lung cancer constitutes 14.4 per cent (one in seven) of all cancers as per Indian Council of Medical Research. Its incidence is rising among both men and women, and increasing numbers are being detected due to better screening and public awareness. Radiotherapy and surgery are two major curative modalities in the treatment of lung cancer with chemotherapy reserved for advanced cases.