Singapore: Doctors at the Cheng Ching General Hospital, Taiwan, are treating liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma) with image-guided radiosurgery using a new TrueBeam STx system from Varian Medical Systems. Varian had recently received SFDA clearance to market its UNIQUE radiotherapy system in China. It also treated an 82-year-old prostate cancer patient using its TrueBeam radiotherapy system for the first time in Australia and also supplied its intensity-modulated radiotherapy systems to the Da Nang cancer hospital in Vietnam.

"With TrueBeam STx, we can generate images of the tumor during the treatment, and use them to adapt the treatment in real-time. This helps us to better target the liver tumor and minimize exposure of nearby critical organs like the duodenum or the stomach," said Dr Po-Ming Wang, chief radiation oncologist at the hospital.

The new TrueBeam system at Cheng Ching General Hospital is the first in Taiwan. The new TrueBeam STx will continue to enable IMRT and RapidArc treatments, but with greater precision and higher dose delivery rates that make it possible to complete advanced treatments in less time.

Dr Wang is especially excited about the Gated RapidArc capabilities of the new TrueBeam STx machine, which use technology to monitor a patient's breathing and compensate for tumor motion during RapidArc treatments. "We anticipate using Gated RapidArc to deliver highly precise radiosurgical procedures for colorectal, liver, and lung tumors," Dr Wang said.

Varian's TrueBeam was designed to treat tumors with unprecedented speed and accuracy. It features many technical innovations that dynamically synchronize imaging, patient positioning, motion management, and treatment delivery. With its High Intensity Mode, a TrueBeam machine can deliver very high doses quickly and accurately, more than twice as fast as earlier generations of technology. The TrueBeam STx is a high-end model optimized for radiosurgical applications, where very large doses are delivered in a single treatment or only a few sessions.