Advanced Radiotherapy Treatment Machines Sent to Global Hospitals in India

Advanced cancer treatments across India will become more widely available with the order of four state-of-the-art medical linear accelerators to one of India's leading private hospital groups.

Three Varian Medical Systems' (Palo Alto, CA, USA) TrueBeam STx systems and a Unique accelerator will be installed at Global Hospitals (Hyderabad, India) sites in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, and Hyderabad in 2011. "This will make some of the world's most advanced treatment capabilities accessible for cancer patients in these major Indian cities,” said Dr. K. Ravindranath, chairman and managing director of Global Hospitals Group. "This country needs more radiotherapy equipment to help its cancer patients and we believe we can help relieve this situation by installing the modern and advanced devices available.”

Dr. Ravindranath reported that Global Hospitals in Bangalore, Chennai, and Mumbai were selected to receive new TrueBeam STx treatment machines because of the rapidly increasing cancer incidence in these major population centers, along with the strength of the neuroscience departments in those hospitals. He stated that the TrueBeam STx systems, all of which are equipped with BrainLAB iPlan planning systems, would enable Global Hospitals to offer the most advanced stereotactic and hypofractionated image-guided radiotherapy treatments available anywhere and would be shared by the group's oncologists and neurosurgeons. TrueBeam systems are capable of delivering treatments much more quickly than any other treatment machine and this enables cancer centers in these hospitals to treat more patients. The UNIQUE accelerator, which also features Varian's RapidArc treatment technology for fast image-guided IMRT, is bound for the Aware Global Hospital in Hyderabad.

Designed to advance the treatment of lung, breast, brain, prostate, head and neck, and other types of cancer, the TrueBeam platform for image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery was introduced by Varian in the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 as the first fully-integrated system to treat a moving target with unprecedented speed and accuracy and to offer fast and precise treatments at a lower cost per treatment than conventional equipment.

Unique incorporates Varian's technologies for effective and consistent dose control, delivery, and beam-shaping, into a machine with a patient-friendly design, which is small enough to fit into almost all existing treatment bunkers. The system is ideally equipped for treating cancers of the head and neck, breast, cervix, and prostate, which comprise the majority of cases in most areas of the world.

The new devices were ordered by Global Hospitals in September 2010 and installation of the first TrueBeam device in Bangalore is due to commence in January 2011.

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Varian Medical Systems
Global Hospitals