La Luz, Spain´s first private hospital to take up the worlds´s first simulator capable of forecasting the effect of intraoperative radiotherapy

Clínica La Luz, Spain´s first private hospital to take up the worlds´s first simulator capable of forecasting the effect of intraoperative radiotherapy
Clínica La Luz in Madrid has become Spain’s first private hospital to take up the new intraoperative radiation therapy planner radiance™. This virtual simulator is a world first, forecasting the effect of radiation therapy on tissues, planning the irradiation zone in a precise way and thus avoiding any damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

Specialists in intraoperative radiotherapy of tumors can now work from a more complete patient analysis for decision-taking before the surgery goes ahead, helping to identify the best possible treatment for each particular case.

radiance™ has been developed by the Spanish group GMV in collaboration with a research team led by the Hospital Universitario Gregorio Marañón and a set of prestigious Spanish hospitals and universities.

Since 2001, when radiation oncology started in La Luz, the clinic has been providing an intraoperative radiation therapy service in its unit; this in itself bears out its experience in this technique. This planner now makes La Luz a worldwide trailblazer among all the other hospitals offering this subspecialism and also the first private clinic in Spain to buy this simulator.

Radiation therapy is a type of oncology treatment that uses ionizing radiation to destroy, inactivate and control the tumor cells. Radiation therapy, together with surgery and chemotherapy, is one of the three pillars of cancer treatment today. It is estimated that over 50% of cancer patients will need radiation therapy for tumor control or as palliative therapy at some moment during the disease.

Intraoperative radiation therapy is a technique for directing a single high-intensity radiation dose at the tumor bed during surgery, immediately after extirpation of the tumor, or at any residual disease, protecting the surrounding radiation-sensitive healthy tissue and organs. This technique reduces the recurrence risk of many types of tumor such as rectum cancer, sarcomas, breast cancer, etc, and improves the curative chances of locally recurrent cancer. It has an important palliative effect in other types of hard-to-treat cancers such as pancreas cancer.

Intraoperative radiation therapy also cuts down treatment time and the number of hospital visits in certain cases such as early breast cancer, in which it can partially or even totally replace external radiotherapy, reducing the overall treatment time by up to 6 weeks. It might even become the exclusive oncology treatment in certain cases. This type of radiotherapy can also minimize the secondary effects on healthy tissue (chronic sequels) and therefore optimizes the use of healthcare resources.