Breakthrough as First Stereotactic Radiosurgery is Conducted at Eldoret’s MTRH
The Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) has successfully performed its first Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) procedure using the hitech Varian TrueBeam platform on a 51-year-old female patient who was suffering from brain metastases.
According to the facility, the patient, identified only as MW, has shown remarkable improvement following the procedure, which represents a major milestone in the hospital’s capabilities to treat complex neurological and oncological conditions.
MTRH’s Director of Hemato-Oncology Dr. Jesse Opakas says SRS is a highly precise form of therapeutic radiation that can target abnormalities in the brain and spine, including cancer, epilepsy, trigeminal neuralgia, and arteriovenous malformations.
It uses non-invasive tumour-destroying radiation to treat cancers throughout the body, as it minimizes exposure to the surrounding healthy tissue.
“SRS is a minimally invasive, non-surgical radiation therapy that uses precisely focused radiation beams to treat brain tumors, vascular abnormalities, and other brain disorders. It delivers a high dose of radiation to a small, well-defined target area while minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue,” Dr. Opakas says.
The TrueBeam technology used by MTRH is renowned for its precision, accuracy, and speed. Most of its treatments take only 5-10 minutes, with patients typically requiring between 1 and 5 sessions.
In the case of MW, five SRS sessions were needed to treat metastatic breast cancer that had spread to the brain.
Other systems capable of delivering SRS include Gamma knife, Cyber knife, and charged particle accelerator.
However, notable advantages of SRS include its minimally invasive nature, precise targeting of tumor(s), limited number of treatment sessions, and effectiveness for difficult-to-reach tumors that might be inaccessible or unsuitable for invasive surgeries.
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