February 29, 2008 – Radiation oncologists, radiation medical physicists and surgical oncologists at The James Cancer Hospital and the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center are teaching Chinese doctors how to use a portable electron-beam linear accelerator to deliver high-dose radiation to cancer patients during surgery, this month as part of a scholarly exchange with China.
The device can move in eight different directions to deliver high doses of radiation directly at the surgical site to destroy residual microscopic cancer cells that may survive surgery. The device can also move sensitive normal tissue out of the way of the high-dose radiation beam.
“The advantage of this intra-operative radiotherapy unit is that actually it can be moved to the patient, instead of having the patient move to the linear accelerator,” said John Grecula, M.D., associate professor and director of clinical research in the department of radiation medicine at The James. “Just one highly targeted dose to the area of the tumor resection is the equivalent of eight daily external radiation treatments.”
For more information: www.osu.edu
January 26, 2024 
