St. Luke’s new equipment expands cancer treatment options

In a promising development for cancer patients in the Philippines, St. Luke’s Medical Center (SLMC) Global City has acquired an innovative technology that provides a “radical” new approach that expands radio treatment options for even the most “challenging cases.”

The “TrueBeam” system was engineered to deliver “more powerful cancer treatments with pinpoint accuracy and precision,” according to SLMC president and chief executive officer Arturo De La Pena.

The technology “uniquely integrates new imaging and motion management technologies within a sophisticated new architecture that makes it possible to deliver treatments more quickly while monitoring and compensating for tumor motion, opening the door to new possibilities for the treatment of challenging cases such as cancers in the lung, breast, abdomen, and head and neck, as well as other cancers that are treatable with radiotherapy, ” He said.

“TrueBeam is a real gamechanger that will enable us to treat even the most challenging cases with unprecedented speed and precision,” he noted.

De La Pena added “with a broad spectrum of new capabilities, TrueBeam breaks the mold in just about every dimension, making it possible for us to offer faster, more targeted treatments to tumors even as they move and change over time.”

Created by Varian Medical Systems and distributed by Siemens Healthineers in the Philippines, the machine primarily offers faster treatment and enhance precision for people with cancer.

SLMC head for the Department of Radiation Oncology Juan Martin Magsanoc said the system can complete a treatment “commensurately faster, making it possible to deliver accurate imageguided treatments in just a few minutes per day with dose delivery rates that are 40–140 percent higher than earlier generations of Varian technology.”