BENGALURU: Fortis Cancer Institute announced the installation of Karnataka’s first Intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) system for the treatment of breast cancer.
IORT is a single dose of radiation given to selected cancer patients, mostly at an early stage of cancer or low-risk cancer. This reduces a 30–40-day radiation therapy into 30 – 40 minutes. The concentrated dose of radiation is given to cancerous tumour site during surgery after the tumour is removed.
A team of doctors led by Dr Sandeep Nayak, Director-Surgical Oncology, Dr Nisha Vishnu, Consultant – Radiation Oncology at the Institute have already performed four IORT procedures on patients with early-stage breast cancers from December 2021 to January 2022.
With this therapy, recovery After surgery is said to be normal and there is no need for any additional external radiotherapy. This saves the patients the additional time, effort and side effects of 30-40 days of treatment.
Dr Nayak told media, “Breast cancer is the most common cancer in India as well as the world. Many patients opt for complete removal of the breast even when lumpectomy is equally effective only to avoid prolonged radiotherapy. The idea behind adopting IORT at our unit is to precisely treat these patients with a single effective dose of radiation which gets over in just 30 mins. Patient does not have to go through the usual long duration of radiation just to save the breast.”
Adding to this Dr Vishnu said, “IORT allows the radiation oncologists and surgeons to work together to deliver a full course of radiation treatment in one day. At the time of surgery, while the patient is under anaesthesia, once the tumour has been surgically removed, the patient undergoes a single dose of targeted radiation delivered directly to the tumour bed. It uses a miniaturized x-ray source to deliver a precise, concentrated dose of radiation directly to the tumour site, while minimizing risk of damage to healthy tissue in nearby areas of the body.”