Cancer patients await radiation therapy at the K Hospital branch in Thanh Tri District. (Photo vietnamnet.vn)Hanoi (VNA) – The (K Hospital) is
working on a project to set up the first centre in the country to use proton
to treat cancer.
Health experts say the new therapy is an advanced form of
radiation therapy that would reduce treatment time and promises to improve the
quality of life during and after treatment.
Current popular cancer treatments include surgery, chemical
therapy, radiation therapy and palliative care.
Deputy Health Minister Le Quang Cuong said that proton
radiation therapy has been applied in some countries for its ability to treat
tumors that can’t be treated by Cobalt radiation or cyclotron radition. The
therapy has also proved effective in treating head and neck cancer, prostate
cancer and paediatric cancer.
“The rate of patients treated with proton radiation having
their tumors decrease in size after three years are considerably positive – 80
to 90 percent with liver cancer and almost 100 percent with prostate cancer,”
he said.
K Hospital’s statistics also reveal that survival rate of three
more years among patients with first and second stage lung cancer is 86
percent, and of five more years among prostate cancer patients is 99 percent.
The survival rate of five more years among head and neck is 74
percent.
Proton therapy is an advanced form of radiation therapy that
uses a single beam of high-energy protons to treat various forms of cancer with
less side effects. The key factor in proton therapy is superior dose
distribution, allowing physicians to precisely aim the highest dose at the
tumor, avoiding healthy tissues.
Proton therapy is especially appropriate for cancers with
limited treatment options and those where conventional x-ray radiotherapy
presents an unacceptable risk to the patient, e.g. eye or brain tumors, tumors
close to the brain stem or spinal cord.
Proton therapy is also very much indicated for the treatment
of pediatric tumors. As a child’s growth implies a constant high rate of
mitosis, his cells will be as vulnerable to ionising particles as proliferating
cancerous ones.
It is therefore crucial to aim the beams only at the tumor to
avoid damage like growth abnormalities, cognitive impairments,
radiation-induced tumors, cardiac damage, and other complications later in life.
Tran Van Thuan, Director of K Hospital, said that
a treatment session in proton therapy generally takes 10 minutes, much
less than the time need for other therapies applied in Vietnam currrently.
“This would also address the current overloading situation in
cancer hospitals in Vietnam and give more cancer patients the chance to live,”
Thuan said.
Thuan said ’s branches have been overloaded
constantly in recent years.
In 2015, the hospital treated 11,700 patients, in 2016 the
number was 12,000 and, so far this year, 15,000 patients up to this time of
2017.
At the K hospital’s branch in Thanh Tri district, there are
three cyclotron radiation machines. Thuan said each machine can be used up to
23 hour a day for 150 to 200 patients per day.
“Meanwhile, it is recommended that each machine is only used
for 40 patients per day,” he said.
The overcrowding means the hospitals have to work extra hours
to serve the patients: a day would only end at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning of
the next day, which would begin just an hour later.
Three or four more new radiation machines are set to go
operational in hospital only in April. Each cyclotron radiation machine costs 50 – 100 billion VND (2.2 – 4.4 million USD) on average.
Vietnam sees 126,000 new cases of cancer each year, and the
number of cancer deaths each year is 94,000.
Last year, the World Health Organisation continued to rank Vietnam among the countries with the highest rate of cancer fatalities. Vietnam was ranked 78th among 172 countries with a cancer death rate of 110 for
every 100,000 people, along with Finland, Somalia and Turkmenistan.-VNA
Source: VietnamPlus
