BLK Super Speciality Hospital takes a Gigantic leap in curing cancer.

"Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship."                   
                                                                                                                           Buddha

BLK Memorial Hospital strongly believes in creating patient centric, tertiary healthcare organisation focused on non-intrusive quality care utilizing leading edge technology with a human touch. Keeping in mind the same motto, BLK Super Speciality Hospital has achieved a new milestone by introducing Cyber Knife technology in India. As the name sounds, this technology works on radiation or in medical terminology, it performs Robotic Radiosurgery.

 Cyber Knife is a path-breaking  technology, already in use successfully across the world to treat cancer with greater confidence and better results.  Cyber Knife technology is used to cure all kinds of tumours, places which is reachable easily or unreachable thru operation. This technology is imported from USA under the guidance of Dr.Xiadong Wu and Dr.S.Hukku, Director Radiation Oncology.

Addressing the press conference Dr.Praneet Kumar, CEO, BLK Super Speciality Hospital raised concern over higher number of incidence of cancer patients in India. The number is increasing in recent years. Last year 5.56 lakh people died because of this fatal desease.  What is more alarming is out of them 71% were between 30-69 years age bracket which is the productive years of any person. It motivated BLK to address this situation and look for new technology to make the cure painfree, and which needs less time and less side effects as well. Cyber knife is certainly the technology for the same.

Dr.S.Hukku alongwith Dr.Praneet Kumar addressing the Press Conference.

About The CyberKnife® Robotic Radiosurgery :

The CyberKnife® Robotic Radiosurgery System is a US-FDA and CE-marked universally recognized, non-invasive radiosurgery system for the treatment of both cancerous and non-cancerous tumors anywhere in the body, including the prostate, lungs, brain, spine, liver, pancreas and kidneys.

The CyberKnife® offers a more effective and painless treatment option while ensuring higher patient comfort. It does not require the use of anesthesia, can be undertaken on an outpatient basis with little or no recovery period and allows patients to almost immediately return to normal activities.

What makes the CyberKnife® Technology unique is its ability to deliver higher doses of radiation, with extreme accuracy, to the tumor. This minimizes and significantly reduces radiation exposure to healthy tissue and vital organs in proximity to the targeted tumor. This also ensures that there are no side effects or post-treatment complications.

Another very important benefit of the CyberKnife® Technology is that it offers a revolutionary therapy solution for patients who have inoperable or surgically complex tumors, or who are looking for a non-surgical alternative.

The CyberKnife®’s image-guided robotic technology continually tracks patient movement and confirms tumor location prior to beam delivery. This efficiently and effectively addresses the challenge of treating the most surgically complex tumors including those that move with respiration, such as tumors in the lungs and the pancreas. The CyberKnife® Technology has so far been used successfully to treat over 100,000 cancer patients worldwide.

According to Dr. Praneet Kumar, CEO, BLK Hospital, “B.L. Kapur Super Specialty Hospital’s Cancer Centre is one of the most modern and well- equipped cancer centers in Northern India. We are extremely pleased to bring the path-breaking and the most advanced CyberKnife® technology to India and to the first in Asia Pacific to introduce it. This technology is already in use successfully across the world to treat cancer with greater confidence and better outcomes.  In India, 400,000 people die every year from cancer making it the 3rd largest killer in the country. We are committed to keeping India ahead of the curve when it comes to new and more effective cancer treatment procedures.”

According to Dr. Shelly Hukku, President Association of Radiation Oncologists of India and Chairman, Roentgen BLK Radiation Oncology Centre BL Kapur Memorial Hospital, “The CyberKnife® Robotic Radiosurgery System is a revolutionary development in cancer treatment.  It allows far superior reach and maneuverability to previously inaccessible and inoperable lesions such as lesions involving the spine and pancreas. For those of us who have struggled to address these problems for so long, this comes as a significant development in cancer therapy.”

 

Each treatment session lasts between 30 and 90 minutes, depending on the type of tumor being treated. If treatment is being delivered in stages, patients are required to return for additional treatments over several days (typically no more than five), as determined by the doctors. The dose rate is high as compared to earlier treatments, the radiation used now is 800-1000 per sitting whereas the same was less than 600 earlier. Hence it  takes less time and hospitalisation cost is saved.

Moreover, BLK has ensured that the patient have a calm and soothing surroundings by giving the ceiling a natural cloud look and the wall has a big natural scenery.

Accuray Incorporated (Nasdaq: ARAY), based in Sunnyvale, California, is the premier radiation oncology company that develops, manufactures and sells personalized innovative treatment solutions that set the standard of care, with the aim of helping patients live longer, better lives. The Company’s leading edge technologies – the CyberKnife and TomoTherapy Systems – are designed to deliver radiosurgery, stereotactic body radiation therapy, intensity modulated radiation therapy, image guided radiation therapy, and adaptive radiation therapy. To date, more than 350,000 patients worldwide have been treated using the Company's technologies and more than 635 systems have been installed in leading hospitals around the world.

Answering the question of how is it different from Gamma Knife, the much used technology in India for curing brain tumours etc.; Dr.Hukku said that in Gamma Knife treatments, the place where radiation has to be given was screwed with a bracket or frame so that the radiation point reaches with accuracy to the tumor. Those screwes used to make the patient bleed, leave hurt. If this process was repeated many times ( as generally it is), then the same point were hurt again and again, and it was very painful for the patient. In Cyber Knife technology, the Robotic machine itself is so apt in providing radiation to the affected area, that it does not need any frame.  In case of children too, who can be scared of the machine, can be given anaesthesia in order to reach exact position of the tumor, without hurting them.

Affordability for the common man:
 Dr.S.Hukku mentioned that while pricing this facility they have taken utmost care to adhere to BLK  motto of giving service to one and all. This treatment is available anywhere between 2 lakhs to 4.5 lakhs depending upon the position, size and condition of tumor. The earlier set notion that people had to sell all their property to cure cancer can be avoided, if the problem is diagnosed in the early stages.