Have you ever heard the term mobile tumor?
If not, the experts at the CyberKnife Center of Miami want to explain mobile tumors to you and why precision matters when it comes to treating cancerous ones.
First – understand, mobile tumors can refer to two different types of tumors.
Benign Mobile Tumors
First, there is a classification of benign tumors, which are considered mobile.
Typically, they’re called lipomas and are not malignant.
Lipomas are slow-growing fatty tumors. They’re usually moveable, round lumps under the skin. They tend to feel soft or rubbery, grow on the neck, back or shoulders. But they can occur anywhere on the body. They can be hereditary, typically don’t cause pain, and tend to develop when a person is between 40 and 60 years old.
Many times, no treatment is necessary, but if a lipoma grows quickly or causes discomfort, it can be treated with surgery, steroid shots and even liposuction.
Malignant Mobile Tumors
But when a tumor is malignant and referred to as mobile, it’s generally for a very different reason.
It’s not that the tumor itself is mobile. It’s that the inside your body is in constant motion. For instance, you’re breathing. Your muscles are tensing and relaxing. Your stomach is filling and emptying, and your blood is flowing.
All this subtle motion makes targeting a tumor with traditional radiation a challenge because the slightest movement – even if a patient is as still as possible — can shift the focus of the radiation beam.
But there is an exception: CyberKnife.
Motion-Synchronized Radiation Therapy: The CyberKnife Advantage
CyberKnife uses what’s called Motion-Synchronized Radiation Therapy (MSRT) – radiation that targets the tumor with less damage to healthy tissue because it moves with your body.
In other words, as your body’s insides move, CyberKnife stays locked on the tumor – detecting even the slightest motion. In fact, CyberKnife is “the only device designed to accommodate all forms of patient and tumor movement,” according to Accuray, the maker of CyberKnife.
CyberKnife uses a robotic radiation system coupled with real-time image guidance to move around a patient “to deliver radiation doses from potentially thousands of unique beam angles, significantly expanding the possible positions to concentrate radiation to the tumor while minimizing dose to surrounding healthy tissue,” says Accuray.
Check out this video demonstrating just how CyberKnife can target a tumor even as your body moves.
CyberKnife technology enables smaller treatment margins around a tumor to minimize exposure to healthy tissue. With CyberKnife, patients require a shorter course of treatment than with traditional radiation because MSRT is targeted radiation.
CyberKnife Cancer Treatment in South Florida
At CyberKnife Miami, we see the advantage of this technology every day.
We treat cancer and other medical issues requiring radiation including spine, brain, lung, kidney, pancreas, liver, prostate and head and neck tumors.
We also treat lymphoma and other conditions where radiation treatment may be necessary. We even tackle hard-to-treat cancers for patients who have been turned away from other centers because of our expertise with CyberKnife.
CyberKnife has been used for more than two decades and studied in hundreds of clinical trials. It has helped hundreds of thousands of patients – even patients who were told they couldn’t have more radiation, or their tumors were inoperable. It’s non-invasive, and for most patients, there is little downtime.
If you would like to find out more about treatment with CyberKnife call us at 305-279-2900 or go to our website now for more information www.cyberknifemiami.com.