A Robotic Cyberknife To Fight Cancer 80
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 a perfect solution, but a nice step (Score:2, Insightful)
not the cure for cancer (prevention > treatment), but this sure looks like an improvement in treatment
first post?
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First 2009 post (eastern time zone)?
Dangit... (Score:1)
Dangit, that headline got my hopes up...
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"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!
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"The Cyberknife is not a real knife"
They were just quoting Crocodile Dundee's opinion.
I was JUST looking at this (Score:2, Interesting)
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It's lo and behold, not "low".
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It's an overused, died-in-the-wool, tow-the-line kind of expression, for all intensive purposes.
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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 whe
Re:OT: Greasemonkey fix for new /. user page (Score:4, Funny)
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.
not news (Score:5, Informative)
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 [georgetown...spital.org]
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You're right, this isn't really news to anyone outside of the UK, and the fact other countries have it first is not news to those inside the UK.
We have a very long process of testing drugs (and machines), so advances in technology can hit the UK 5-8 years behind others.
Plans are underway to speed up this process, and damn right when you consider France and Germany both have these machines, and yet we all belong to something called the EU.
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Typical crap Roland summary. We've already got one in the Pacific NW:
http://www.ohsu.edu/ohsuedu/academic/som/radiationoncology/cyberknife-sw-washington-medical-center.cfm [ohsu.edu]
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My brother just had cyberknife treatment for an aural tumor. A few MRIs to pinpoint the area of treatment and 5 sessions. Then they track the shrinking of the tumor for the next 6 months. Short term side effects were general pain in the ear area, headaches, but nothing much worse than what he was already experiencing.
The alternative was brain surgery and we're all so far pleased the cyberknife was an option and George Washington University was nearby.
The Cure to Cancer (Score:2, Insightful)
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Also, there's the whole theory that most of these diseases and illnesses won't ever be 'cured' because the repeated treatment brings in more money than the cure would.
Conspiracy theories... (Score:1)
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.
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Well there's alot of problems with conspiracy theo (Score:1)
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Because as we all know the members of a cartel would never screw the other members by selling under the table.
If it's one thing we can be sure of it's that there's honor among thieves.
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uses high intensity focused gamma rays to destroy cancer cells
If they're not careful, cancer patients are going to turn into The Incredible Hulk.
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That's because cancer is a catch-all word that describes the overall effect of unchecked mutated cell growth, but not the mechanism that causes it, nor the mutations that continue. Some cancers may have a common genetic cause, but the environmental cancers are thought be caused by damage to the DNA.
Things like flaws on the BRCA1 gene are associated with breast cancer, for example, and may initiate the disease on their own over time. These might be eventually preventable with a gene therapy designed to
Disease-fighting robots (Score:5, Funny)
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A device to stab someone over the internet (Score:1, Funny)
That man is destined to be rich and famous
ALMOST THERE... (Score:1)
Am I the only one that immediately thought of the bio-etheric laser from the spirits within?
Not Remotely News (Score:2)
FTA:
In fact, these have been around for about a decade, am I right?
This is not news. This is olds.
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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.
England, Awake! (Score:2)
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?
A knife, you say? (Score:4, Funny)
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Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Informative)
www.tomotherapy.com
I tried.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Jury Still Out On CyberKnife (Score:2)
Evidence for Cyberknife's efficacy using lower dosages wrt convential treatments is still being gathered [nytimes.com], 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 [nytimes.com] than existing treatments.
Some of these new machines can cost several million dollars and offer amazing fra
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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.
Several million would be cheap compared to some devices. According to this article [nytimes.com], accelerators can exceed $100 million per machine.
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The cyberknife works by delivering multiple beams of high dose radiation from a wide variety of angles using a robotic arm.
Hang on a sec! Doesn't radiation give you cancer? And doesn't cancer take a long time to develop?
It seems likely to me that the damage done by such devices will not be detected right away. Hence if it kills the cancer cells in the tumor, but damages the DNA in neighboring tissue and gives you more cancer years later, you will likely blame the original cancer for having grown back, and not the machine for having given you a new cancer.
C'mon, let's use a little physics and dose of common sense:
Correction to the summary (Score:2, Informative)
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 th
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Remember Therac? (Score:2)
I hope they learned their lessons from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 [wikipedia.org] machines and installed hardware safety devices.
An army of MacGyvers . . . (Score:2)
. . . armed with CyberKnives.
Against the Sharks with Lasers.
Coming soon to a theater near you.
It's also a time machine... (Score:1)
permitted to treat 50,000 patients in the first semester of last year.
House, anyone? (Score:1)
methinks this would make a good house episode....
10 years to get the knife; then 10 year use wait (Score:2)
family experience (Score:1)
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 medicatio
The first Cyberknife? (Score:2)
For more details:
http://www.prohealthcare.org/services/cyberknife/index.aspx [prohealthcare.org]
One step closer to robotic cybermuggings (Score:1)
Never take a robotic cyberknife (Score:1)