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CyberKnife puts Roper on cancer treatment cutting edge
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
When the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control last month gave Roper St. Francis Healthcare the green light to acquire a CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System, the Charleston-based health care provider joined elite company.
Roper St. Francis is the first medical center in South Carolina to get the groundbreaking technology and is one of only 75 medical centers in the world to use CyberKnife. Fifty of those centers are in the United States, according to Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Accuray Inc., CyberKnife’s manufacturer.
CyberKnife is a computer-controlled, non-surgical device that breaks down cancerous tumors by shooting precise radiation beams at them without disturbing surrounding tissue. The machine’s robotic arm rotates around the patient and shoots beams at different angles.
The machine treats lung, spinal, brain, liver, prostate and pancreatic cancers. It will be installed and begin treating patients next spring in Roper’s new Heart and Vascular Tower on Calhoun Street.
“CyberKnife will enable us to offer surgical quality outcomes with a non-invasive procedure that uses intelligent robotics to treat tumors with extreme accuracy anywhere in the body,” said Dr. Mary Decker, Roper St. Francis Healthcare’s medical director for radiation oncology. “This brings new hope to patients with some of the most difficult-to-treat cancers.”
It also brings more business to Roper St. Francis Healthcare. During its first year of operation, CyberKnife will treat 120 patients from across the state. Without the new machine, Roper could lose these patients to Mission Health and Hospitals’ CyberKnife Radiosurgery Center in Asheville, N.C., the nearest CyberKnife location, Roper officials said.
Business benefits
In addition to marketing CyberKnife as a cutting-edge tool for treating cancer, Accuray promotes the machine’s business-boosting benefit for hospitals. The company’s Web site, www.accuray.com, cites Sinai Hospital in Baltimore and St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., as two examples of hospitals treating more cancer patients because of CyberKnife.
A CyberKnife system costs about $5 million. However, Roper St. Francis Healthcare entered a five-year joint venture with Accuray in which Roper will spend $1.5 million to build a treatment room to house CyberKnife, Accuray will donate the machine and the two entities will share revenue generated, said Matt Severance, Roper Hospital’s chief executive officer.
Such a business arrangement is not specific to Roper St. Francis and is one option offered by Accuray’s CyberKnife placement program, Accuray spokeswoman Ashley Greer said.
Roper St. Francis Healthcare so far has not decided what CyberKnife treatments will cost, said Severance.
Radiology Today magazine reported last year that treatments can cost between $25,000 and $60,000.
Pinpoint treatment
Accuray has doubled its CyberKnife installations during the past year, bringing its worldwide total to 75, a company press release issued in June said.
Since its debut three years ago, CyberKnife has treated more than 20,000 cancer patients worldwide, the release said.
CyberKnife’s form of cancer treatment is called “stereotactic radiosurgery.” While the patient is reclining, image guidance and computer-controlled robotics are used to pinpoint radiation beams to cancer tumors while a respiratory tracking system adjusts the machine for tumor movement caused by the patient’s breathing.
Treatments last 30 to 90 minutes, depending on the tumor’s complexity and shape. Patients require no aesthesia.
CyberKnife is regarded as a breakthrough for cancer cases that previously proved too tough to treat, Decker said.
“It allows us to treat patients whose cases we’ve grown frustrated with over the years,” said Decker, adding that Roper’s doctors can now re-treat those patients with CyberKnife.
Doctors at Roper began pushing for a CyberKnife system about a year ago, said Severance.
“The demand was driven by CyberKnife’s clinical uniqueness,” he said. Construction of the treatment room to house CyberKnife could begin this month.
“This is a big deal for the state,” Severance said.
Dennis Quick covers health and wellness for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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