THOMPSON CANCER SURVIVAL CENTER TO TAKE CANCER PROGRAM TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH PURCHASE OF ELEKTA INFINITY TREATMENT SYSTEM

Press Release
Stockholm, Sweden, September 18, 2008

Thompson Cancer Survival Center (TCSC, Knoxville, Tennessee) has placed an order for Elekta Infinity, reaffirming their long-term commitment to deliver the most advanced radiation therapy treatments. The addition of Elekta Infinity, a linear accelerator optimized for Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT) will complement the center’s decade-long plan to improve patient outcomes.

Chester Ramsey, Ph.D., director of medical physics at TCSC expects the time savings with Elekta VMAT, a new treatment that targets tumors with high doses of radiation while protecting healthy tissue, to be dramatic. “With fixed-gantry IMRT delivery on other linear accelerators, it currently takes 7 to 15 minutes to treat most of our IMRT patients. We estimate that VMAT treatment delivery times with Elekta Infinity will be reduced by at least 50 percent, without compromising treatment quality.”

“At TCSC, clinicians and researchers began using single rotation, constant dose rate volume modulated arc therapy more than 10 years ago,” explains Ramsey. “The added capabilities of Elekta Infinity, such as simultaneous control of gantry rotation speed, collimator rotation and variable dose rate will advance our cancer treatment program to a new level.”

TCSC currently treats 100-150 patients per day at three locations. Dr. Ramsey expects to treat up to 40 patients each day with Elekta Infinity, about half of which will be VMAT treatments for prostate, head and neck, lung, esophagus and brain cancers.

In addition to Elekta Infinity, TCSC also is scheduled to install an Elekta Synergy® linear accelerator. Elekta Synergy is an advanced multi-functional linear accelerator that enables clinicians to image and treat patients simultaneously.

Clinical information from all treatment systems will be streamlined with MOSAIQ® image-enabled oncology EMR, already in use at TCSC. MOSAIQ integrates patient information and charts from initial diagnosis and staging through scheduling, planning, treatment and subsequent follow-up, maximizing efficiency and minimizing patient waiting times.

Dr. Ramsey says the new additions at TCSC will provide patients with a higher standard of cancer care than ever before. “The clinicians and researchers at TCSC are extremely excited about our new relationship with Elekta,” he adds.