HYDERABAD, India, June 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- A three-year-old
baby girl with a brain tumor has become the 10,000th
patient at Yashoda Hospital in Hyderabad,
India to be treated using RapidArc® radiotherapy technology
from Varian Medical Systems (NYSE: VAR).
The treatment comes just six years after RapidArc was first
introduced clinically at the private hospital, which treats more
than 4,000 patients a year from the states of Telangana and Andhra
Pradesh in the south-east of India. "The patient responded well to the
treatment," said Dr. G. S. Rao,
director of the Yashoda group of hospitals.
Yashoda was the first hospital in India to introduce RapidArc treatments and
over the past six years it has phased out the use of 'static-field'
intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) treatments and replaced
them with RapidArc. In so doing, it has become the first hospital
to reach the landmark of 10,000 RapidArc treatments.
Varian's RapidArc technology delivers fast and precise
radiotherapy treatments in single or multiple rotations of the
treatment machine around the patient. Faster treatments allow
for greater precision, since there is less chance of patient
or tumor movement during treatment delivery, and the patient spends
less time on the treatment couch.
Over half the RapidArc treatments carried out at Yashoda over
the past six years have involved tumors of the brain, head and
neck. Three Varian linear accelerators at the hospital are
equipped with RapidArc technology, which was introduced by Varian
to speed up treatments and make advanced IMRT approaches more
widely available to cancer patients globally.
"We see RapidArc as a very efficient and precise way of
delivering advanced radiotherapy," said Dr. Rao. "Because of the
speed of RapidArc treatments, we no longer have a waiting list. In
fact, we usually start treatments within two days of the patients
being taken for CT simulation."
"Achieving ten thousand treatments so quickly is an impressive
milestone for Yashoda Hospital," said Ashok
Kakkar, Varian's managing director in India. "We are pleased to see our RapidArc
technology making such a huge difference to cancer patients across
the south of India."
Although Yashoda is a private cancer center, it has a strong
history of delivering treatments 'pro bono' for those who cannot
afford advanced radiotherapy. About of a fifth of the center's
RapidArc treatments have fallen into this category. Indeed,
for several years it has sent a bus into local villages several
times a month and brought patients back to Hyderabad for treatment. The bus, equipped
with a wide range of diagnostic equipment, travels to remote
villages throughout the province of Andhra Pradesh and screens
patients for cancer. If people need treatment, they are brought
back to the hospital and treated without charge.
About Varian Medical Systems
Varian Medical Systems, Inc., of Palo
Alto, California, focuses energy on saving lives by
equipping the world with advanced technology for fighting cancer
and for X-ray imaging. The company is the world's leading
manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer
and other medical conditions with radiotherapy, radiosurgery,
proton therapy and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics
software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy
centers and medical oncology practices. Varian is also a premier
supplier of X-ray imaging components, including tubes, digital
detectors, and image processing software and workstations for use
in medical, scientific, and industrial settings, as well as for
security and non-destructive testing. Varian Medical Systems
employs approximately 6,800 people who are located at manufacturing
sites in North America,
Europe, and China and approximately 70 sales and support
offices around the world. For more information, visit
http://www.varian.com or follow us on Twitter.
Press Contact
Neil Madle
Varian Medical Systems
+44 7786 526068
neil.madle@varian.com
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SOURCE Varian Medical Systems