NEW HYDE PARK, NY – Representatives from the North Shore-LIJ Health System, Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center and Varian Medical Systems recently unveiled an innovative new system called TrueBeam™ that offers a radically different approach to treating cancer with image-guided radiotherapy.

The TrueBeam™ system, now in place at LIJ Medical Center’s Department of Radiation Medicine in New Hyde Park, opens the door to new possibilities for the treatment of lung, breast, prostate, head, neck and other cancers that are treatable with radiotherapy. It uniquely integrates new imaging and motion management technologies within a sophisticated new architecture that makes it possible to deliver treatments more quickly while monitoring and compensating for tumor motion.

With dose delivery rates that are potentially 40-to-140 percent higher than earlier generations of Linear Accelerator technology, the TrueBeam™ system can complete a treatment commensurately faster. This makes it possible to offer greater patient comfort by shortening treatments and improve precision by leaving less time for tumor motion during dose delivery. “Intelligent” automation further speeds treatments with an up to five-fold reduction in the number of steps needed for image guidance and dose delivery.

“We intend to put this machine through its paces to assure safe and responsible therapy” said Dr. Potters. “But the advent of TrueBeam demonstrates North Shore-LIJ’s commitment to bringing cutting edge technology to our community”.

Simple treatments that once took 15 minutes or more can be completed in less than two once the patient is in position. “These are significant reductions in treatment time,” said Louis Potters, MD, chairman of radiation medicine at North Shore-LIJ. “Patients will spend a whole lot less time lying still, immobilized on a hard surface.”

For more information, contact the Department of Radiation Medicine at LIJ at (516/718) 470-7190, or go to www.northshorelij.com/NSLIJ/Cancer+Landing+Page.

Contact: Terry Lynam
516-465-2640/2600
tlynam@nshs.edu