PORT ANGELES — Olympic Medical Center has added a high-tech weapon to its cancer-fighting arsenal.
Hospital commissioners voted 6-0 on Wednesday to approve the purchase of a Varian TrueBeam linear accelerator to treat cancer patients at the Sequim cancer canter.
The state-of-the-art, $2.7 million technology will allow radiation oncologists to treat tumors with a high dose of radiation to a precise location without damaging surrounding tissue.
“We will be the first one in the Pacific Northwest to have this equipment,” said Tara Lock, director of Olympic Medical Cancer Center.
The machine will be up and running by March, Lock said.
OMC Assistant Administrator Rhonda Curry said the technology “will move us to the level of world-class cancer centers around our country.”
Dr. Rena Zimmerman, OMC radiation oncologist, said the difference between the new machine and the 8-year-old equipment at the cancer center is akin to the difference between 35 mm film and a digital camera.
Dose rate
“This machine has a dose rate that is the highest available on the market,” Zimmerman told commissioners.
“It cuts down that treatment time by 75 percent.”
The new linear accelerator will enable doctors to perform stereotactic cancer therapy, which Lock described as a “more precise delivery of radiation.”
“One of these areas might be, for example, in a lung cancer,” Zimmerman said.
“So imagine a lung cancer in the edges or the periphery of the lung. Usually, we try to take that patient to surgery and remove that.”
But patients with certain medical conditions can’t undergo invasive surgery.
“We can now treat that lesion very precisely and get the same result that the thoracic surgeon did by cutting it out,” Zimmerman said.
Stereotactic radiation treatment can be used for brain, liver and other forms of cancers, Zimmerman added.
The combination of the TrueBeam linear accelerator and OMC’s new CT scanner also will allow for “gating.”
Follows the target
Gating enables doctors to treat breast and other cancers without damaging nearby organs as a patient breathes and the tumor moves.
“It essentially follows the target,” Lock said.
OMC will share information about its new machine with Seattle Cancer Center, to which it is an affiliate, Lock said.
The hospital commissioners also approved a $500,000 temporary vault and linear accelerator to be used for three months during the removal of the old machine and installation of the new one.
A $225,000-per-year maintenance contract for the new machine runs from 2012 to 2015.
OMC’s Budget and Audit Committee recommended the purchase.
“This is probably our single largest capital expenditure for one single piece of equipment that we’ve had in I don’t know how many years,” said Commissioner John Nutter, who chairs the budget committee.
“It fits very well into our strategic plan. It provides some of the safest and most effective treatment that’s out there. The quality is second to none.”
_________
Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
