Posted In Cancer Care News on January 10, 2024
Cancer is unforgiving. To beat it, you need to be equally as relentless in your treatment approach. It requires a calculated and multidisciplinary plan using the most advanced technologies.
At the Allen Cancer Center at TidalHealth Nanticoke in Seaford, Del., a new state-of-the-art Varian TrueBeam linear accelerator is operational for radiation treatments; made possible through the continued generosity of Barbara and Chick Allen and their devotion to improving healthcare for the Western Sussex County community.
The unit, dedicated with a ribbon cutting on Jan. 10, now aligns the Allen Cancer Center with the very same Varian TrueBeam linear accelerators in use at the TidalHealth Richard A. Henson Cancer Institute Peninsula Regional campus in Salisbury, Md., and at the Richard A. Henson Cancer Institute located at the health system’s Ocean Pines, Md. campus.
“That’s important for not only continuity of care, but also for our Delaware patients who previously had to travel to Maryland for highly advanced procedures like stereotactic radiosurgery and stereotactic body radiation therapy,” said John Mansueti, MD, Executive Medical Director of Cancer Services for the Richard A. Henson Cancer Institute and Allen Cancer Center at TidalHealth. “Each of these specialized treatments is designed to provide highly focused, tightly conformed and precise beams of radiation to destroy tumors, while sparing surrounding tissue and greatly reducing the number of times and the duration of time patients must spend on the treatment table.”
TrueBeam, which is designed to provide those treatments as well as others, is essential to standardizing and streamlining care and providing the best care possible while ensuring accuracy, preserving healthy tissue, reducing treatment times, and being able to address a diverse range of clinical cases and cancer lesions or tumors. The unit also features a new motion management system called Identify, which in tandem with the TrueBeam’s advanced technology, provides sub-millimeter setup accuracy as well as correcting for any patient motion during treatment.
In addition to advanced technologies, multidisciplinary clinics and conferences bring together a host of subspecialty doctors to discuss new cases every week. TidalHealth’s membership with the Johns Hopkins research network, working in tandem with its own institutional research department, offers patients on Delmarva an opportunity to enroll in the latest clinical trials with exposure to cutting-edge treatment.
TidalHealth’s Radiation Oncology Department’s comprehensive peer review process, involving physicians at each TidalHealth facility, has served as a model for other regional practices outside of the region.
“Our new TrueBeam linear accelerator is just the latest weapon the TidalHealth Allen Cancer Center has to battle cancer,” said William Woods, MD, the primary radiation oncologist at the Allen Cancer Center. “At TidalHealth, we ensure that all our patients in Southern Delaware and the surrounding communities receive the best and most appropriate radiation treatment, and that it is delivered with the utmost care and precision.”
In the photo, TidalHealth leaders, board members and clinicians cut the ribbon on the Allen Cancer Center's new TrueBeam linear accelerator.
