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Radiotherapy now within reach of cancer patients in Marbella too

12 febrero 2021

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The first radiotherapy machine in Marbella has come into operation. The distances between hospitals and the waiting times that until now have eroded the quality of life of people with cancer in the municipality and surrounding area are a thing of the past.

The HC Marbella cancer centre has already begun treating its first patients with a tomotherapy accelerator that brings all the technological advances together in a single machine: IGRT (Image-Guided Radiotherapy), IMRT (Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy), adaptive capability and the Synchrony tracking system, which follows the tumour in real time, increasing the precision of each session.

This state-of-the-art technology, unique in Spain and the second in Europe, will make it possible to treat around 350 cancer patients from the Costa del Sol each year.

Alongside medical oncology and surgery, radiotherapy is a fundamental pillar of cancer treatment. Of the 276,239 new cancer cases that will be diagnosed in Spain in 2021, 60% will need this treatment. And 40% could be cured with radiotherapy alone or combined with other treatments, such as surgery or chemotherapy, according to the Spanish Society of Radiation Oncology (SEOR).

HC Cancer Center now offers, in a single centre, multidisciplinary, comprehensive and personalised cancer care that ranges from oncological surgery and radiotherapy to targeted therapies and immunotherapy.

“All the therapeutic weapons gathered in one place, so that we can achieve the best results for our patients”, explains Dr Paula Sedano, specialist in radiation oncology at HC Marbella.

Thanks to new diagnostic methods and cutting-edge cancer treatments such as radiotherapy, survival rates have doubled in the last 40 years.

First patients

Among the first procedures carried out at the HC Marbella Radiotherapy Unit is a treatment aimed at the pleura of the lung. C. H. is a cancer patient who has been diagnosed with mesothelioma and is suffering pain caused by the disease. She travels from Málaga to receive this new radiotherapy, which protects the healthy tissue near the tumour as much as possible.

“With radiotherapy we hope to be able to reduce the pain and stabilise it in the treated areas”. It is a complex treatment “as it covers a large volume because of the extent of the disease, and that volume is also close to critical structures such as the spinal cord, heart and contralateral lung”, the doctor points out.

Thanks to this machine’s ability to shape the dose, “we manage to direct the radiation to those areas where there is the greatest tumour burden and the most symptoms, while respecting the dose limits of the surrounding healthy structures”, adds the radiotherapist.

In the clinical case of T. W., a patient with high-risk prostate cancer, the radical treatment of choice is radiotherapy. He no longer has to leave Marbella to receive his radiation sessions.

In the prostate, the key is to make sure that the bladder and rectum, which are the adjacent organs, receive the minimum radiation. “By carrying out adaptive radiotherapy, with deformable fusion, we can make sure that the doses given to the patient are those intended, taking into account possible changes in the patient’s anatomy or internal organs”, according to Sedano.

In certain lung and prostate tumours, radiotherapy achieves results comparable to surgery, without being an invasive treatment. It uses shorter, more effective radiation that requires sub-millimetre accuracy technology, which is difficult to achieve with conventional treatments.

This translates into more precision and versatility in fewer sessions, which means greater safety and a better quality of life for the patient.
HC Marbella intends to formalise collaboration agreements with the main national insurance companies, in order to be able to treat as many patients as possible.