Hi Diana,
I went to a seminar at the Wisconsin Medical College this spring called
something like "Improvements in Cancer Treatment". Different specialists
discussed the current status of chemo and rad for various cancers.
One of the radiologists showed slides of improved techniques for treating
brain mets. He showed slides of brain tumors & how, if the x-ray machine
could move around the head while always aiming at same tumor, the healthy
parts of the brain would only receive negligible amounts of radiation while
the tumor would get large doses. This drastically cuts down on doing damage
to the healthy tissue while reducing the tumor faster than whole brain
radiation. Even though the x-ray machine is computerized to move exactly the
same way each tx, the placement of the patient's head has to be "exactly" the
same each time and he can't move at all or the wrong spot could be radiated.
He had slides of original patients with a large metal ring that was
semi-permanently screwed into patient's skull, and then the ring was screwed
into table for each treatment. Not too many patients wanted to do that. The
newest technique was to make a very exact tight-fitting plastic mold of the
back portion of patient's head. Then the patient lays down and puts head in
mold. I believe that they used the name stereostatic radio.... - the same
thing you were referring to. So my point in all this rambling is that it's
also being done at WI Med. College but I don't think they mentioned doing it
for any body part other than the head. Also I e-mailed a young man who was
successfully treated for 3 brain mets from LC with this method - don't
remember what hospital but I could find out. He said it was successful and
he had very few side-effects.
By the way, taxotere is not approved for NSCLC in US EXCEPT for clinical
trials. It has been approved in at least 23 other countries for NSCLC.
Because I participated in the US clinical trial for taxotere (which drug
company supplied free), my doctor can now continue to prescribe this drug
for me after the trial at his discretion.
Tricia
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