Description

Radiation Oncology

At the Group Florence Nightingale Hospitals Department of Radiation Oncology, we believe that including standard modern devices is absolutely necessary, but not enough. It’s the experience that makes the difference.

Radiotherapy is a team job, and we have an experienced radiation oncology team.

Our department was the first in Turkey which performed 3-D conformal radiotherapy technique in 1998. Having accumulated extensive experience in conformal radiotherapy technique, then we had a pioneering role in density adjusted radiotherapy (YART) technique use in Turkey in 2005. We are proud to be the Oncology Department, which has the most extensive experience in YART in our country.

The Radiation Oncology Department which began to apply radiotherapy with radiometric density adjustment with RapidArc device since 2010, the treatment time of our patients with this method is quite shorter and the patient’s decreased duration of stay in the treatment device. The shortening of this period also minimizes positional changes due to the prolongation of the patient’s stay at the table, allowing to increase set-up accuracy and increase the effectiveness of treatment.

At our department, our other outstanding high-tech devices are;

• IMRT (Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy), the radiation dose is formed to the target volume, while the dose taken by normal tissues is reduced. It is also possible to give different doses to different treatment volumes on the same day, which is called Simultaneous Integrated Boost (SIB).

• IGRT (Image Guided Radiation Therapy), is a type of conformal radiotherapy. Conformal radiotherapy shapes radiation rays according to the form of cancerous tissue.

• IGRT takes computed tomography images using X-rays (before and during treatment). X-ray and tomography images show the position and shape of cancerous tissue along with the surrounding bone and soft tissues.

• TrueBeam STx, is an advanced radiotherapy device. It is often successfully used in the treatment of tumors in hard-to-reach areas. What makes TrueBeam STx different from similar technologies is that thanks to its ability to reach high dose speed, it is able to deliver a higher dose in much less time, and therefore significantly is that it provides high performance treatment processes that reduce.

• The Real-time Position Management (RPM) system is a non-invasive video based imaging system. With this system, quality images can be obtained in the lungs, breast and upper abdomen areas.

Additionally, we have been doing radiotherapy with golden markers for 10 years, especially in radiotherapy of prostate cancer. We monitor prostate movement during treatment with electromagnetic transmitter inserted into the prostate, and stop therapy when excessive movement is observed while treating millimetric prostate cancer. This is advantageous, because high doses of radiotherapy can be administered more effectively in a shorter time.

For the last 2 years, we have been able to remove the rectum (intestine) from the cloud of high dose with gel injected between the rectum and the prostate, and many intestinal side effects of radiotherapy are overcome.