Hearing your pet has cancer can be tough news program to withdraw . Then there are all the decision you have to make about their treatment program , such as medicinal drug , chemotherapy , radiation , or even operating room . The proficient news is that veterinary medicine is forever develop , thanks to advances in applied science and the evolution of new intervention and subprogram . One such innovation , called the CyberKnife , is a non - surgical treatment option that is helping improve effect for pet who are diagnose with cancer .
What exactly is the CyberKnife?
“ The CyberKnife is a non - incursive treatment for cancerous and non - cancerous tumor and other conditions where radiation therapy is indicated , ” says Dr. Siobhan Haney , a veterinary radiation oncologist atBluePearl Malvernin Pennsylvania . “ It is used to deal conditions throughout the body and can be an alternative to surgical procedure for patient who have inoperable or surgically complex tumors . ”
Unlike conventional radiation therapy , which may take up to 20 treatments , CyberKnife radiation therapy “ use a robotlike weapon to deliver the entire therapeutic dose of radiation in one to three treatments . ” The robot moves and bends around the patient role and providesreal - time mental image guidanceso the dose of radiation can be exactly point .
The CyberKnife systemhas more than two decades of clinical validation in human medicine and has been a game changer for hundreds of thousands of human affected role around the macrocosm . But the comer of the cock at theBluePearl CyberKnife Cancer Centerin Malvern is extra exciting as it is pave the elbow room for the use of this technology in pets . “ There is no other veterinary hospital in the world using this discourse , ” Dr. Haney says .
What makes CyberKnife stand out from existing cancer treatments for pets?
“ CyberKnife is dissimilar from other handling on the market because the robot can move with the tumor as it ’s go , in real meter , ” Dr. Haney shares . For example , if veterinarians are tracking a lung tumor , as a patient breathes in and out , the lungs will expand and constrict , causing the tumor to shift . CyberKnife can continuously tail the tumor ’s gesture and adjust the radiation speech to follow its movement .
“ This allows us to deliver treatments in the lung and anywhere in the body with submillimeter truth , ” Dr. Haney explains . This precision minimizes damage to environ healthy tissue paper , build CyberKnife a revolutionary option for process complex or inoperable case .
One big triumph for the team at BluePearl since CyberKnife ’s arrival is the successful treatment of a tumor involving the adrenal gland , which is consult to as an intra - abdominal pheochromocytoma . “ The tumor was invading into the vena cava , which is a large , significant blood watercraft , ” Dr. Haney says . “ It was determined that surgery was too grave because of the danger of create a leak in the cava , so we treated the neoplasm with CyberKnife or else . ” Due to the treatment , the tumor shrank slowly over time , the symptom gradually go away , and the dogtooth patient is now thriving .
While the veterinary CyberKnife is presently only usable at BluePearl , it ’s likely the technology will make its way to other clinic in the time to come , helping treatment for pets with cancer become even more successful .
