'CyberKnife' posts

The Swedish Radiosurgery Center was a featured stop for the nursing students from Kobe City College of Nursing during their recent visit to Seattle. The students toured the center where they learned about our CyberKnife and Gamma Knife programs.

“I was very impressed that the patient care is personalized to respect the needs of every individual. I have a lot of respect for staff who sincerely work with patients regardless of their background and circumstances. We learned the importance of having confidence in our field as medical professionals and the great privilege of serving ones in need.”

- Keiko Kikuchi, RN, PHN, Assistant Professor, Kobe City College of Nursing.

The group learned ...

Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy is a new term that has been coined to describe the delivery of very high doses of radiation delivered over a handful of treatment sessions. This precise method targets small tumors located in the lung. This new treatment has been pioneered and studied extensively in patients who are not suitable candidates for an operation but have been diagnosed with early stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

The advantages of this approach are that the treatment can be completed in 1-2 weeks (including the planning time), and only requires 3-5 treatments. The treatment requires highly specialized planning and preparation and is delivered using state of the art linear accelerators like the CyberKnife®. Our team has been offering stereotactic ablative radiotherapy for over 4 years.

The results are outstanding for this population of patients. A number of studies have demonstrated that the local tumor control rates exceed ...

Almost daily there are new recommendations for how to treat prostate cancer and an equal number of controversies surrounding the recommendations. What is a man to do when faced with the words, “you have prostate cancer”?

The good news is that there are many proven options to consider; but how do you choose the best one for you? The decision can be daunting and the controversies swirling in the news only increase the confusion when wading through the information. You may be considering:

• Active surveillance (watchful waiting) is an option for those who want to closely monitor their cancer over short intervals. Intervention is considered if the cancer grows quickly, PSA scores increase or other situations arise warranting a more aggressive treatment plan.

• Surgical options are available and with the advances in robotic technologies, the procedure is less invasive than in the past, recovery times are reduced and fewer side effects are reported. 

• Radiation options are also available and treat the cancer either with external radiation beams or implanted radioactive seeds.

  • CyberKnife Radiosurgery uses robotic technology to track the prostate in real time and delivers high doses of radiation with pinpoint accuracy. This is an outpatient procedure where the patient comes to the center for five, one hour sessions over the course of one week. Long term side effects are rare and cancer free survival rates are excellent. (You can learn more here.)

  • Seed Implantation is another method of delivering radiation to treat prostate cancer. With this option, the radiation is delivered internally via tiny radioactive seeds which are implanted into the prostate. This too is an outpatient procedure and long term results are excellent and side effects are few. 

As a radiation oncologist specializing in treating prostate cancer...

If you have never heard the term radiosurgery, you are in good company. This sci-fi sounding word may conjure images from Star Trek but radiosurgery is anything but fiction.

Radiosurgery uses multiple beams of radiation from a variety of directions to destroy diseased or damaged tissue. Although the name sounds like a surgical procedure, this is a non-invasive way to treat many different conditions. The CyberKnife and Gamma Knife technologies are very precise and avoid injury to surrounding, normal tissue and the course of treatment lasts from a single session to less than 2 weeks...

SEATTLE – May 29, 2012 – Swedish Cancer Institute (SCI) is set to open its new True Family Women’s Cancer Center to patients on Tuesday, June 5. Carefully designed with the female cancer patient in mind, the new 23,600-square-foot women’s cancer center gives Swedish Cancer Institute the ability to consolidate most of its services for treating women’s cancers into one facility. The new center acts as a treatment hub where women are guided through personalized and coordinated multidisciplinary treatment of their cancer, including disease-specific education and holistic support activities.

SEATTLE, Feb. 7, 2012 – Since diagnosing and managing cerebrovascular disorders can require a complex assortment of specialty evaluations and testing, Swedish Neuroscience Institute (SNI) recently opened a new Cerebrovascular Center on the first floor of James Tower at the Cherry Hill campus (550 17th Ave., Suite 110, Seattle).

SNI used patient-focused convenience as the foundation for designing the new facility, which opened Dec. 19, 2011.

“In this one location, SNI has consolidated its existing advanced diagnostics and interventional therapeutics, as well as the newest generation of technology,” said David Newell, M.D., cerebrovascular neurosurgeon and chief of Neuroscience. “The center also features the expertise of a care team that includes cerebrovascular neurosurgeons, vascular neurologists, neuroendovascular and radiosurgical specialists, neuroradiologists, neurohospitalists, and advanced practitioners who are trained to evaluate and treat cerebrovascular disorders.”

The facility also includes a Stroke Clinic.

A comprehensive menu of procedures

In addition to advanced diagnostics, the center offers ...