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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.
It's lo and behold, not "low".
"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If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?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.
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 real news os that it's been approved for use in England.
But even in the USA, it's not like it's routine. It's not like you can get your health insurance to cover it no questions asked.
It's not a panacea either.
To my knowledge, in the USA it's primarily used for lung and liver tumors, and not even for first-line treatment, but for metastasis.
Shows some promise, but cancer treatment doesn't move as fast as you think.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
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?
It's an overused, died-in-the-wool, tow-the-line kind of expression, for all intensive purposes.
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!
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.
You're assuming they're competing and not colluding.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
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
Only nineteen years after the first installation of a Cyberknife English cancer patients don't have to take a plane to the US to get treatment?
Well all hail the National Health Service!
I wonder how important you'll have to be for the NHS to pop for Cyberknife treatment at a private clinic? Prime minister? PM's mum? Head of the PM's security detail? Cousin of an MP?
But maybe England's one of those places where those with political influence don't use it to save the lives of those closest to them. A place where noble dedication to the public good is the norm and prevents elected officials from taking advantage of the privileges of office for personal benefit at the expense of the public.
Naw, that's just stupid. Of course there's corruption of the system. The only questions are; how extensive it is and whether the news media sees fit to investigate and report.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.