RADIATION ONCOLOGY

MidState's advanced radiation planning and treatment capabilities, as well as its skilled and caring staff, ensure the finest care for patients with cancer. Allan S. Kratzer, MD, who completed his residency in Radiation Therapy at Harvard Medical School's prestigious Joint Center for Radiation Therapy, leads our Radiation Oncology team.

CT Simulation lets MidState technicians create extraordinary three-dimensional images of the patient's body to outline and digitally target a tumor. This enables radiation therapists to align radiation beams to the tumor with pinpoint accuracy.

This state-of-the-art treatment delivers high doses of radiation directly to cancer cells, while sparing surrounding normal tissues. IMRT allows safer and more accurate treatment of cancerous tumors and can be used to treat tumors that might have been considered untreatable in the past, due to their close proximity to vital organs and structures.

The Elekta SLI linear accelerator at MidState Medical Center is the most technologically advanced accelerator currently available. This machine can deliver higher doses of radiation more precisely to tumor sites, thereby maximizing the likelihood of destroying cancerous tissue, while minimizing damage to surrounding normal tissues. The Elekta SLI has three photon energies and five electron energies to irradiate tumors at any depth. It has an eighty-leaf multi-leaf collimator and is digitally computer driven, allowing for the most precise delivery of radiation therapy using "dynamic conformal radiation therapy."

In addition to external beam radiation therapy, the cancer program at MidState also offers a prostate seed implant program. With this procedure, radiation can be delivered to the prostate by surgically placing small radioactive seeds directly into the prostate using ultrasound guidance. The advantage of brachytherapy is its ability to deliver higher doses of radiation to the prostate gland, with smaller doses to surrounding tissues (bowel, bladder, rectum). Prostate Seed Implantation reduces the risk of treatment-related side effects including impotence. Urologists and radiation oncologists collaboratively plan and perform the procedure in the operating suite at MidState Medical Center.