Page 11 - Summer 2016

DESTINATION: GPS FOR THE BODY®
Prostate Cancer Treatment
RESULT:
Reduced Side E ects
Varian Calypso System for Prostate
During radiation therapy treatment, your prostate moves. It may move just a little, but that tiny movement is critical because a moving target makes accurate treatment tricky. After all, we want to treat just the cancer, while minimizing exposure to everything else.
Meet the Calypso system. We call it GPS for the Body because it uses radio waves to track the prostate’s movement continuously during treatment – in real time – which limits exposure to surrounding healthy tissue. And that means reduced side eects.
Reduced side eects? That’s a result worth navigating to.
Findings of a clinical study published in the medical journal, Urology , showed that the use of the Calypso system resulted in a reduction in many of the self-reported side eects of radiation treatment compared to patients who were not treated with Calypso. This included a signi cant lowering of bowel symptoms as well as urinary irritation/obstruction. There was not a signi cant reduction in urinary incontinence. The study results suggest that treatment with the Calypso system also reduced sexual dysfunction at two months and that this may be related to the reductions in urinary and bowel symptoms. Long-term sexual dysfunction side eects may not show up for one year. Overall, these reduced side eects may lead to improved quality of life outcomes for patients. For more information on this study, go to www.varian.com/calypso.
Community Cancer Center 2880 NW Stewart Parkway, Suite 100 Roseburg, Oregon 97471
Phone: 541-673-2237 Fax: 541-672-9483
More information can be found at www.CCCRoseburg.org. Talk to your physician to see if you qualify for this treatment.