Robotic surgeon receives brain-transplant to treat lung cancer

CyberKnife, a radiotherapy robot used to operate on cancer patients, has received a new brain in order to effectively treat lung cancer.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre created a program called Synchrony - an addition to CyberKnife - that allows for easier detection of tumours.

In the past, scientists say CyberKnife wasn't used for lung cancer patients because it caused too much tissue damage.

Scientists say this is due to shifting of the tumour, which can move up and down in a lung by four centimetres when a patient breathes, making it difficult to detect its location.

Synchrony allows a weaker X-Ray to rapidly take real-time pictures of a patient's abdomen while CyberKnife blasts the tumour with small beams of radiation.

The new technology then measures the movement of the tumour from the pictures and tells CyberKnife where to go, following the tumour within a few hundredths of an inch.

Scientists say the machine's accuracy means healthy tissue is hardly touched, so doctors can increase the radiation to ten times higher than conventional methods.

The new set-up also decreases treatment time significantly, the scientists say.

With the new technology, patients would attend three 60-90 minute sessions, as opposed to the 20 or 30 15-minute sessions of conventional therapy.

The scientists claim the first couple of treatments were successful, although they are not sure if the machine is killing-off the tumours completely, or whether there are long-term side effects.

The researchers' findings will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine this August.

Photography: The Sky Factory

Source: Discovery Channel Reports, July 25 edition