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For Immediate Release 1/2/2003

Jill Bloom 410-601-5025

Sinai Hospital Becomes First In Maryland to Offer New State-of-the-Art Treatment for Tumors

Sinai Hospital of Baltimore is the only Maryland-based health care system offering CyberKnife®, a groundbreaking and unique radiation therapy that uses cruise missile technology to accurately locate and target tumors. The CyberKnife® gives doctors the ability to treat multiple tumors and lesions, some of which have been diagnosed as inoperable, without making a single incision.

The CyberKnife® precisely locates the position of the tumor in the body and then uses a high-energy X-ray source mounted on a robotic arm to deliver highly focused beams of radiation to the tumor. This highly targeted technique allows the maximum amount of radiation to get to the source of the tumor and kill it, while protecting surrounding healthy tissue from damage.

"The CyberKnife® is a painless and accurate way for us to operate on tumors we might otherwise not be able to remove,” said Alan Levine, M.D., head of Orthopedic Oncology and director of the Alvin & Lois Lapidus Cancer Institute, Sinai Hospital. "Its high precision and accuracy enables us to achieve a surgical-like outcome for lesions of the brain, neck, lung and spine. In the near future, we hope to be able to treat other types of tumors as well.”

"What makes this great is the fact that CyberKnife® offers a non invasive solution with fewer complications than open surgery,” said Mark Brenner, M.D., chief of Radiation Oncology, Sinai Hospital. "This is the first and only robotic stereotactic radiosurgery machine used for treating the spine and the spinal cord.”

Neal Naff, M.D., a neurosurgeon at Sinai and surgical director of the Cyberknife Program, notes that the CyberKnife® offers several advantages over older stereotactic radiosurgical treatments. "One advantage of the CyberKnife® is that a patient may lie comfortably on the operating table without anesthesia while the robotic arm moves around to treat all areas of the tumor,” said Naff. Other methods of stereotactic surgery, such as the Gamma Knife, treat only tumors of the head and require that the patient lie completely still, held in place by a rigid frame that is bolted into the skull.

"The addition of Cyberknife therapy secures Sinai's standing as one of the state's leading providers of comprehensive neurosurgical and neuro-oncologic services,” said Dr. Naff.

The CyberKnife® will be installed in a specially prepared radiation vault and will be available to patients in the spring of 2003. It will become an integral part of both the newly formed Spine Center at Sinai and the Alvin & Lois Lapidus Cancer Institute.

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