CyberKnife
 Via Christi Regional Medical Center offers the very latest in stereotactic radiosurgery — or SRS. The 4,000-square-foot CyberKnife® Center, which opened in 2006, is on the St. Francis campus, next to the Via Christi Cancer Center, one of the region's premier cancer programs.
CyberKnife offers unsurpassed accuracy and the ability to adjust to the tumor size and location anywhere in the body, offering many patients new treatment options that were not possible in the past.
It's the only SRS system that uses robotic technology combined with
image-guidance to administer precision radiation treatments to previously inoperable tumors, without the need for rigid patient restraints or undue patient discomfort.
CyberKnife's unique light-weight linear accelerator — the part that produces its high-energy radiation beams — is mounted to a flexible jointed robotic arm able to target tumors from more than 1,300 different angles. The patient's movements, including breathing, are synchronized with CyberKnife to allow pinpoint radiation treatment on moving targets.
The extreme accuracy of the CyberKnife is unsurpassed, lending it the ability to deliver high-precision radiation to the tumor while avoiding the healthy tissue around it.
As a CyberKnife patient, you'll lie on the treatment table in street clothes, wearing a custom-fit mesh face mask or body mold to maintain body position. Image detectors on each side of you receive signals from ceiling mounted X-ray sources that allow the system to know the exact location of the tumor and where to move.
The robotic arm then moves the linear accelerator, which delivers the
radiation with pinpoint accuracy. After the treatment, you can go home
with no recovery time needed.
Traditional radiation therapy can involve 10 to 40 treatments but with CyberKnife, that can be reduced to one to five treatments. That means more flexibility for patients and less time away from work.
It offers patients treatment with:
Visit the CyberKnife Patient Education Web site to learn more about CyberKnife treatment, read patient success stories, access the Patient Support Group Forum, find answers to questions about reimbursement and more.
For more information about CyberKnife treatment at Via Christi, talk with your doctor or call the Via Christi CyberKnife Center at 316-261-3200 or 800-362-0070 ext. 3200. |
