Medical advances have seen an innovative new technique arrive in the UK this week as a robotic radiotherapy machine that is built to treat cancer will be used for the first time in this country.
The machine is known as a Cyberknife and costs a cool £2.5 million to make. It works by tracing the movement of a patient’s breathing in order for tumours to be reached with a much greater degree of precision than has ever been possible before. The Cyberknife then targets the tumour using a robotic arm which gives out a number of high strength radiotherapy beams at multiple different angles. Clever X-ray cameras check the patient’s breathing which allows the radiotherapy beam to move around to ensure surrounding tissues do not get targeted and damaged.
The preciseness of this innovative treatment means that tumours that are located in hard to reach and dangerous places - near the spinal chord for example - can be targeted with more ease and minimal risk factors.
So far, ten lucky people are set to receive the treatment at the famous Harley Street Clinic in London. The cost to use the treatment on each patient is not cheap, coming in at around £15,000 to £20,000 per head. Dr Nick Plowman - a consultant oncologist at St Bartholomew’s hospital will be supervising the treatments, commented, “If you get a discreet little tumour in an awkward place, under the liver or next to the kidney, then there’s really nothing better than the Cyberknife.”
