Latest cancer treatment proves safest, most comfortable

12 March 2015
Latest cancer treatment proves safest and most comfortable for patients

State of the art radiotherapy treatment at Wellington Hospital is providing faster, more effective cancer treatment with fewer side-effects for patients, a radiation oncologist says.

Volumetric Arc Therapy (VMAT) is the latest generation of external beam radiotherapy treatment and is used to treat head and neck, and prostate cancer at the Wellington Blood & Cancer Centre.

Radiation oncologist Dr Doug Iupati says Wellington Hospital was the first in New Zealand to adopt VMAT technology for prostate cancer and the centre has since seen “an amazing change in treatment over the past four years”.

Prior to VMAT, patients undergoing prostate cancer treatment with traditional radiotherapy commonly experienced diarrhoea, irritation, and bleeding as side-effects from radiation damage to their bowels.

Now such acute bowel side-effects are almost never seen during a course of radiotherapy treatment. Dr Iupati says the technology behind VMAT achieves this with pin-point accuracy.

“The technology is very precise. It’s an unbelievable difference compared to the ‘blunderbuss’ type treatments used 10 years ago.”

VMAT delivery is also much faster than conventional radiotherapy, which requires a manual ‘stop-start’ approach to target the prostate from different angles, he says.

Kāpiti man Warwick Gibson commenced treatment for his prostate cancer in November 2014. Although his course was seven weeks long, he says the treatment itself was very quick.

“I was only in there for 10 – 15 minutes and then I was on my way back to work again. It’s all very well geared up. The staff and nurses were excellent and I didn’t have any side effects. All in all everything was very smooth.”

Capital & Coast DHB is committed to providing high-quality cancer care and was recently placed top of the table for Faster Cancer Treatment in the latest round of health target results.

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