A powerful tool for radiotherapy

According to the World Health Organization’s Global Cancer Report 2014, nearly half of all new malignancy cases occur in Asia, most of them in China, which ranks first in new cases. Each year, 3.5 million new cases of malignant neoplasms are diagnosed in China, resulting in approximately 2.5 million deaths. Since 2006, the World Health Organization has redefined malignant tumors, which were originally considered as “incurable”, as chronic diseases that can be treated, controlled, or even cured. Malignant tumors evolve from normal cells in the body and are a group of cells that grow out of control and are aggressive. Nowadays, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are still the three major means to treat malignant tumors, among which the long road of cancer treatment led by surgery has been continued for more than 100 years. At present, more and more clinical data prove that modern radiotherapy can achieve the same treatment effect as surgery with less trauma and side effects. Radiotherapy kills tumor cells through ionizing radiation. 70% of malignant tumor treatment process requires the participation of radiotherapy, and some tumors can be cured radically through radiotherapy. With the innovation of computer technology and imaging technology and people’s in-depth research on radiotherapy methods, modern radiotherapy has developed from conventional radiotherapy to precise radiotherapy, which aims to increase the irradiation dose of tumor without increasing or reducing the damage to normal tissues, so as to increase the local control rate The aim is to increase the local control rate by increasing the irradiation dose to the tumor without reducing or increasing the normal tissue damage, thereby increasing the survival rate and quality of life of patients. The main techniques include three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy, intensity-modulated conformal radiotherapy, image-guided radiotherapy, spiral tomotherapy, and stereotactic radiotherapy. Cyberknife, also known as stereotactic radiofrequency surgery platform, is a new type of whole-body stereotactic radiosurgery treatment device, which perfectly combines linear gas pedal, computer technology and tumor real-time tracking technology, and uses high-dose, low-segmentation, narrow-beam, high-energy X-rays to precisely target the target under the real-time monitoring of image-guided system to produce local radiobiological response It is used to ablate tumors or lesions. It can be used for non-invasive treatment of malignant and non-malignant tumors in various parts of the body, and is a form of whole-body radiosurgery with the advantages of no wound, no bleeding, no anesthesia, no pain, and short recovery time. In 1987, John R. Adler, a professor of radiation oncology at Stanford University, developed the radiofrequency knife, which began clinical use in 1994 and was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2001 to treat patients with tumors in appropriate areas throughout the body. Since then, researchers have developed a blueprint for the treatment of tumors in multiple sites such as brain, spine, lung, liver, pancreas, kidney and prostate tumors through continuous research and development of the radio wave knife, which is widely used in clinical malignancy treatment. Especially when tumors are close to important organs such as the eye, brainstem and spinal cord, which cannot be removed by surgery and are difficult to implement by ordinary radiotherapy, radio wave knife treatment shows its unique advantages. The radio wave knife is composed of a linear gas pedal, a robotic robotic arm, a robot-controlled treatment bed, a treatment planning system, a target area positioning tracking system, a respiratory tracking system, and a computer network integration and control system. Its core is interactive robotics, which tracks the patient’s position, tumor location and feedback from the patient’s respiratory motion in real time, and makes real-time corrections for small movements of the patient’s target area, making it a true dynamic image-guided radiation therapy device. The computer-controlled, six-joint robotic arm can accurately irradiate up to 1,500 X-ray beams in different orientations to lesions throughout the body, while the radiation dose around the lesion decreases dramatically, greatly reducing the occurrence of radiation side effects and complications. The advantages of the radio wave knife include the following: First, the radio wave knife is currently the only device that uses real-time image-guided positioning technology, which can detect the displacement of the target area in real time and can compensate for small movements of the patient’s target area in real time to ensure the accuracy of the “surgery”. This technology allows the patient to breathe normally and relax during the treatment. Secondly, it eliminates the need for cranial staples and metal fixation during head irradiation, so there is no need for anesthesia and no bleeding or pain. It can perform both single treatment and hypofractionated treatment, and has significant advantages over traditional radiosurgery for deep skull base, craniocervical junction and nasopharyngeal tumors, without any dead space during treatment. Thirdly, the radio wave knife has excellent tumor conformal projection technology, its 6 degrees of freedom precision mechanical arm can provide the best space expansion and mobility, and with the lightweight linear gas pedal high-energy radiation source, according to the treatment plan, the radiation beam can be quickly delivered to the target area of the lesion, using multiple pencil-shaped beams to penetrate the tumor and timely dispersion of the pencil-shaped beam entry point, in order to reduce the exposure of surrounding normal tissues and ensure the target area receives the highest dose of radiation. The beam is delivered to the target area to reduce the dose to the surrounding normal tissue and to ensure the most concentrated and uniform irradiation of the target area. Because of the non-co-planar and non-isocentric irradiation, it is very suitable for irregularly shaped tumors and can also treat multiple tumors simultaneously. Fourth, the accuracy of radiofrequency treatment is unmatched. Its ability to treat tumors with high precision is unmatched by other radiation therapy and radiosurgery systems. The radiofrequency knife can “sculpt” the extent of the tumor so that only the tumor can be precisely irradiated without damaging the surrounding healthy tissue. Finally, the radiofrequency knife is a highly efficient and rapid form of radiation therapy for tumors, with the full course of treatment typically completed in 1-5 sessions. It takes about 30 minutes for intracranial tumors and 45-60 minutes for body tumors, and most patients can go home and rest after treatment. In short, the radiofrequency knife provides an excellent tool for radiosurgery and radiotherapy. So far, more than 100,000 patients worldwide have been treated with the radiofrequency knife, and Warren Buffett, the “God of Stock”, was diagnosed with prostate cancer and treated with the radiofrequency knife with good results and no discomfort after treatment. “Steve Jobs, the father of Apple, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and survived for 8 years with a combination of treatments including the radiofrequency knife. Due to the remarkable treatment effect, today more than 250 hospitals around the world have this advanced treatment equipment, and about 50% of the top 50 hospitals in the United States use the radio wave knife technology. The radio wave knife has been featured in Forbes as a pioneering high-tech medical product and was named a “Global Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum.