Elekta Versa HD
September 19, 2013 – On September 4, Kettering Medical Center (Kettering, Ohio) became the first clinic in North America to use Elekta's Versa HD system to treat a patient, a 71-year-old woman with medically inoperable lung cancer.
The rapid speed of radiosurgery with Versa HD enabled Kettering physicians to reduce the number of treatment sessions for this patient from seven weeks to three days. In addition, each treatment session decreased from 40 minutes to less than 10 minutes.
"With Versa HD, we can cut total treatment times for our patients by at least three-to four-fold," says Douglas Einstein, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman of Radiation Oncology at Kettering Medical Center. "This new technology has the potential to allow us to add more patients to the daily radiotherapy schedule, including patients with long commutes because the number of sessions could radically decrease. Just as important, the decreased treatment time per session will improve the patient experience.
"For example, lung cancer patients who receive radiosurgery may have their arms raised for a 40-minute session and that can be difficult for some patients," he adds. "The High Dose Rate mode of Versa HD allows us to shorten radiation beam delivery time and improve patient comfort in radiosurgery cases."
To learn more about Versa HD, visit www.VersaHD.com
Versa HD is not available for sale or distribution in all markets.