by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | September 30, 2014
From the September 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Determining the value of proton therapy as it applies to different cancer sites is an essential part of utilizing the technology responsibly. “There will be some disease sites where [proton therapy] will become standard of care, at other sites it will not,” says Frank. In terms of prostate cancer specifically, the conversation again returns to side effects. “Erectile function rates are better with proton therapy than anything we have seen with IMRT,” Frank says.“If we can give patients the ability to continue to have sexual relations, there is high value to that.”
MD Anderson has already conducted a few studies to that end, one of which involved more than 1,000 patients treated with proton therapy for various stages of prostate cancer. All participants were at least one year to more than 10 years post-treatment. The study found that men treated with proton therapy had comparable urinary and bowel function to men their age who never had prostate cancer. The results of the study did indicate a decrease in sexual function ,in comparison to healthy men, but that decrease was particularly with patients who had received hormone therapy in conjunction with proton therapy.
Meeting consumer demands
Just as a cell phone once cost thousands of dollars, advocates for PBT anticipate costs will go down as the technology is implemented on a larger scale. Meanwhile, new modalities are expected to become more compact. DOTmed spoke to Joseph K. Jachinowski, chief executive officer of Mevion Medical Systems, about their smaller-scale, single gantry proton therapy system, the MEVION S250. “Mevion is the only manufacturer of single room proton therapy solutions,” says Jachinowski. “All the other single gantry solutions actually require a multi-room installation, and that leads to facilities that range from twice, to four times, as large as a Mevion facility.” Jachinowski believes the reduction in square footage alone translates to millions of dollars in construction cost savings in comparison to traditional centers.
Jachinowski also emphasized how easy the MEVION S250 is to operate, saying it is the only proton therapy system on the market today that does not require a dedicated team of engineers or physicists to operate it. “The therapist sets the patient up directly using built-in CT quality image guidance, they walk out of the room, and they press the ‘beam on’ button just like they would with a linear accelerator.” Jachinowski says the value of a single-room modality lies partially in the limited consequences of technical problems. “With conventional proton systems the accelerator, or parts of the complex beam transport system, will fail. When that happens you lose the entire facility at one time. Just as X-ray therapy machines don’t share an accelerator, we think proton therapy will inevitably go that way because of inherent benefits.
