DUBAI, UAE, April 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --
A 42-year-old female diagnosed with liver metastases has become the first cancer patient at Mediclinic City Hospital to be treated with a revolutionary form of radiotherapy called stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT). Performed at Mediclinic City Hospital's newly-opened Comprehensive Cancer Centre (CCC), Dubai's most advanced facility for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, this technique is designed to decrease the overall treatment time from several weeks to just five individual sessions. Delivered by Mediclinic's True Beam Varian linear accelerator, the only one of its kind in the UAE, SBRT is used for tumours that occur in locations that would be otherwise difficult to treat, by using advanced immobilisation devices to maintain the patient's position and deliver radiation with millimetric precision. In this way, the tumour receives a high dose of radiation with reduced toxicity to the surrounding tissues.
Mediclinic is proud to now be providing this world-class service in the UAE. Other treatments such as stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy, both of which can reduce treatment time and adverse side effects for cancer patients, will be implemented in the near future.
Mediclinic City Hospital's Comprehensive Cancer Centre was developed in association with Mediclinic's Swiss sister company, Hirslanden, which means that patients can benefit from the sharing of knowledge and experience between some of the leading oncology experts in Europe and the Middle East, as well as access to the very latest treatment programmes and technology. In addition, data from the TrueBeam linear accelerator is matched to that at Hirslanden which makes it possible for a patient to be treated at both the CCC at Mediclinic City Hospital in Dubai, or at Hirslanden in Switzerland, without the need for dose recalculations.
The development of Mediclinic City Hospital's radiotherapy services, which allow cancer patients in the UAE to access the very latest treatment modalities, has been made possible by the expertise and knowledge of its entire team of specialists including Dr. Falah Al Khatib and Dr. Salim Chaib Rassou, both consultant radiotherapy oncologists and leading international experts in the field.