Pediatric Patient Treated Using RapidArc™ Radiotherapy Technology in Switzerland

BELLINZONA, Switzerland, Dec. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- A Swiss cancer clinic is among the first in the world to use a new, faster radiotherapy technology from Varian Medical Systems to treat a child patient. A 12-year-old girl with Hodgkin's lymphoma was treated using Varian's RapidArc™ technique at the Istituto Oncologico della Svizzera Italiana (IOSI) in Bellinzona, southern Switzerland.

The girl received her targeted radiotherapy dose in less than two and a half minutes, using two continuous revolutions of the device while she lay on the treatment machine. The RapidArc treatment was considerably faster than would have been possible with conventional intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) treatments, which are slower and more difficult for radiotherapy radiographers because they target tumors using a complex sequence of fixed beams from multiple angles.

source: Varian