“It’s covered by Medicare, and reviewed on a case-by-case basis by other insurance companies. So it’s becoming a new option,” says Fred Dumas, MD, a radiation oncologist and medical director at Brookwood Cancer Care Center. “It’s not experimental, and it’s less expensive than other options.” Brookwood Medical Center treated their first prostate cancer patient with the CyberKnife four years ago.
CyberKnife is exact and powerful, which greatly shortens the treatment for prostate cancer. “Rather than bringing in beams from seven directions from the standard IMRT field, we bring it in from 200 directions,” Dumas says. “So that allows us to focus very tightly on the tissue, which enables us to give more radiation per fraction.”
The other benefit to CyberKnife technology is its ability to compensate for the movement of the patient and the prostate in real time. The beams are locked onto markers in the body and adjust their location if the target moves. That minimizes any damage to surrounding healthy tissues.
Dumas says that because CyberKnife is so accurate, it’s best suited to patients needing a tightly confined treatment. “The best patients are at very low risk of the disease being outside the gland,” he says.
Though the technology hit the market years ago, CyberKnife is too young to have produced data to suit the noted mile marker for prostate cancer of ten to fifteen years. “But so far, results look excellent,” Dumas says.
“Men need to know what their choices are beyond surgery,” Dumas says. “They need to know that this option is available, that it’s not experimental; it’s not brand new, and it’s available locally.”
