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A Robotic Cyberknife To Fight Cancer
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Cyberknife is not a real knife. This is a robot radiotherapy machine which works with great accuracy during treatment, thanks to its robotic arm which moves around a patient when he breathes. According to BBC News, the first Cyberknife will be operational in February 2009 in London, UK. But other machines have been installed in more than 15 countries, and have permitted doctors to treat 50,000 patients in the first semester of 2008. And the Cyberknife is more efficient than conventional radiotherapy devices. The current systems require twenty or more short sessions with low-dose radiation. On the contrary, and because it's extremely precise, a Cyberknife can deliver powerful radiation in just three sessions."
not the cure for cancer (prevention > treatment), but this sure looks like an improvement in treatment
first post?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
on our hospital intraweb. We're doing a re-cap of the year and I happened to see something about our "Cyberknife" center. Low-and-behold, I log into /. to waste some... er... research a bit and here it is again! Pretty interesting stuff. Perhaps I can get a tour of the facility here some time.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
"The Cyberknife is not a real knife"
Dangit, that headline got my hopes up...
The sharks with freaking laser beam union would never put up with that. With a name like Landshark17 I'd have thought you'd know that!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Georgetown University Hospital in Washington DC has had several models of these going back years. They do radio ads for using it for prostate cancer.
http://www.georgetownuniversityhospital.org/body.cfm?id=451
This forwards my idea that there is no holy grail-esque "cure to cancer." Instead therapies and treatments will continue to advance, and increase the survivability of cancer. This cyberknife, if I understand the procedure correctly, uses high intensity focused gamma rays to destroy cancer cells. I could go into detail... but wikipedia would be easier to go to, and more accurate. In any case, the cure for cancer is a technological journey, not a magical vial of fluorescent green liquid.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
A robot to fight cancer is impressive, but I hear the Japanese are working on a robot that can give you herpes.
That man is destined to be rich and famous
FTA:
In fact, these have been around for about a decade, am I right?
This is not news. This is olds.
Don't put advice in your sig.
Is that code for masturbate? If not, it should be. :-)
P.S. I hate the Firehose Tab too.
Someone, please make this a configurable item.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"The Cyberknife is not a real knife"
They were just quoting Crocodile Dundee's opinion.
CyberKnife vs. GammaKnife
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
I'm not sure if medicine is always rationed, but I suspect that in the US it's rationed to a varying degree for the great majority of people, even when you have private health insurance. I've known of plenty of cases where insurance companies will not pay for more expensive treatment options until you first try a more conservative and inexpensive approach. Even when the more advanced treatment is clearly indicated. You can find plenty of cases of US insurance carriers who won't cover cyberknife treatments, as they judge the cyberknife to be experimental. Experimental doesn't necessarily mean it's not effective, but that they have not determined that it's more effective than existing treatments that cost less. Not an unreasonable position, if they're making an honest effort to evaluate the available data. It's difficult to determine how often these sorts of determinations are made with the best interest of the patient as opposed to financial interest of company executives and owners. Also, sometimes advanced treatments have a better short term outcome for many patients, but long term studies don't show a significant increase in longevity. Long term studies may have clearly indicated cyberknife is the most effective treatment for some conditions, but if that's not the case, should an insurance company burden all it's participants with higher premiums for marginally better outcomes? This article, for instance, discusses the issues related to treating prostrate cancer with the cyberknife. How much more per month are most people willing to pay for health insurance so that some people can live two or three months longer or have fewer side effects? $50? $100?
You're forgetting that there's more than one drug company, and that they're all very greedy. If one company came out with a cure, they'd be able to take the business from all of their competitors who are merely selling treatments. Also, as the recent economic situation should make clear, these companies would rather have some money now than more money later.
Here now, what's all this then? Somebody has a knife? In the UK? No worries, a constable will be around shortly to confiscate it!
www.tomotherapy.com
I tried to get an appointment with my doctor to get this treatment, but I have no coverage. The only doctor who would talk to me offered an appointment on 12/22/2012. Should I be concerned?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Evidence for Cyberknife's efficacy using lower dosages wrt convential treatments is still being gathered, especially for prostate cancer treatment.
One of the more remarkable twists governing medical devices in the USA is that, unlike pharmaceuticals licensed with health claims, medical devices do not have to demonstrate conclusively in clinical trials that they are of proven benefit or greater efficacy than existing treatments.
Some of these new machines can cost several million dollars and offer amazing franchise opportunities... providing enough procedures can be scheduled on the machines during their operating lifetimes to amortise the cost and produce a profit.
Da Blog
it's been approved for use in England.
Ah, but what of Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland? Only one of the four national health insurance systems in the UK gave the go-ahead?
Da Blog
We used something similar to kill my daughter's (benign) brain tumor that was in an inoperable location, so unfortunately I know a lot about the subject.
Devices like this have been used for decades to treat brain tumors. Search for Leksell gamma knife or medical uses of the linear accelerators. The basic principle is to use numerous focused radiation beams from different directions in order to deliver the maximum possible radiation dose to the tumor (place where the beams intersect) while delivering less than lethal dose to the surrounding tissue.
These techniques have been limited mostly to brain tumors, because:
a) getting to them surgically can cause significant damage, and
b) the head can remain fixed during the procedure
What's new about the Cyberknife is that it can be used on internal organs that move as the patient breathes and his heart beats, two things you can't make stand still using general anesthesia.
Don't get your hopes up that this is something that will bring great improvements to tumor treatments. It won't. Surgery, followed by chemical therapy or radiation (to kill any malign cancer cells that have spread), is still considered the golden standard in most cases.
Tumor treatment has been improving incrementally. Your chances of surviving if you have a malign tumor are much greater than they were fifty years ago. But they still suck. Don't expect anything revolutionary until somebody finds a way (tailor-made virus or a tweak to your immune system) to kill just the tumor cells without killing healthy tissue.
Dejan
I hope they learned their lessons from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 machines and installed hardware safety devices.
. . . armed with CyberKnives.
Against the Sharks with Lasers.
Coming soon to a theater near you.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
permitted to treat 50,000 patients in the first semester of last year.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
The first off is the the problem is that in order to do that is that they have to be "Just-so Evil". By that I mean that they have to be evil enough to screw regular people over. However when it comes to screwing each other over all of a sudden they become honest for no real reason.(Since they could either try to take over the whole market for themselves or even collude at first and milk out some extra money by selling more than their quota when no one is looking.) Also there's the problem that if a cure existed cancer rates would probably go up since nobody is going to bother avoiding cancer if they can take a pill and be cure. (So big deal if you make less money on a single regiment to cure a patient. You'll make it up on the repeat business anyway. So go ahead, lay out in the sun all day or whatever. In the end it'll get fixed no matter how many times you get cancer.) The final problem I see with the "conspiracy" idea is that of the suppliment. (Which is weird that they could "forget" that given how common they are the US.) The idea is pretty simple, if you had a safe and effective cure for cancer that was resonably priced one way to make alot of money would be to just make it part of a vitamin pill and charge a little more for the pill. (I mean suppose there was a vitamin on the market that cost a $1 a day to take. One effect of this is that as long as you take it you can never get cancer. Anybody want to take a guess how many people in the Western world would be willing to pay for that? Hell, I would just knowing how one can die in a matter of days after the discovery of some cancers.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
methinks this would make a good house episode....
The wonders of single-payer medicine.
After some research we found the CyberKnife Center in Saint Paul Minnesota and she was treated in early April. The treatment was effective in killing the original tumor and had neglible side effects other than some fatigue and very mild nausea, easily treated with medication.
She was totally pain and symptom free for over six months following the treatment, which gave her a considerable extension of her life with excellent quality of life, compared to the alternatives. Unfortunately the cancer did continue to spread and is now showing up in other parts of her body, and she has only 3-6 months to live. But she (and we her family) are very happy that we did the CyberKnife treatments because of the extra good months that we have had with her.
So, I would recommend this medical technology highly from our experience. While expensive, it is effective, the treatments are not hard on the patient, and the side effects are minimal compared to any other cancer treatment modalities.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment â" Buddha
The *first* Cyberknife? No, it's the first Cyberknife in the *UK*. We've had a Cyberknife for more than a year and ours was not the first in Southeast Wisconsin.
For more details:
http://www.prohealthcare.org/services/cyberknife/index.aspx
Damn you, science!
...to a robotic cybergunfight.