St Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston, Texas, USA, has purchased a CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System from Accuray to further expand treatment offerings for its nationally recognised NeuroScience Center programme.
The CyberKnife System will be installed in a newly constructed facility designed to expand the hospital's radiation oncology facility.St Luke's has been ranked by US News and World Report as one of the USA's top 50 hospitals for a number of specialties, including neurology and neurosurgery. It is the only hospital in Houston, and only one of four hospitals in Texas, to be named a Neuroscience Center of Excellence by NeuStrategy. 'The addition of the CyberKnife System to our tools will further strengthen our position as a provider of innovative, comprehensive and high quality care,' said Youssef G Comair, MD, FRCSC at St Luke's. 'When we surveyed our physicians about what new technology was needed to serve our community, they overwhelmingly believed that the CyberKnife System was the best option for our patient population. The CyberKnife System is truly a revolutionary device that will enable us to give patients a non-surgical alternative for treatment of cancer or other conditions affecting the nervous system.' St Luke's will use the CyberKnife System primarily to treat vascular malformations and intracranial tumours, but it will give the hospital flexibility to treat tumours in the spine, lung, prostate, kidney and pancreas as well. Because the CyberKnife System combines robotics and sophisticated real-time imaging technology, it is capable of delivering high doses of radiation to tumours anywhere in the body with sub-millimetre accuracy. These capabilities eliminate the need for invasive head and body frames, which other systems require to immobilise the patient for tumour tracking. The robotic arm also enables the system to target tumours that are unreachable by other Radiosurgery systems or surgery. As a result, the CyberKnife System offers new hope to patients who are considered inoperable, have surgically complex tumours, or are seeking an alternative to surgery. 'St Luke's is renowned for its commitment to the highest standards of neurological and neurosurgical patient care,' said Euan S Thomson, PhD, president and chief executive officer of Accuray. 'We are pleased to be working with them to offer their patients a non-invasive alternative to brain surgery and other cancer treatments.'
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