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The CyberKnife® Stereotactic Radiosurgery System at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore has added the new Synchrony® Respiratory Tracking System to enhance the treatment process. The Synchrony® System allows the CyberKnife® to accurately treat tumors that are actually moving, making it easier for patients to undergo treatment.

"Unlike lesions of the brain and spine, many tumors, in the lungs, for example, move when a person breathes,” said Mark Brenner, M.D., chief of Radiation Oncology at Sinai Hospital and medical director of the CyberKnife® Center. "Before we had Synchrony®, the only way to treat these moving tumors was to have patients hold their breath during treatment. With the Synchrony® System, that isn't necessary. The patient can continue to breathe comfortably while getting treated.”

The system works by recording the breathing movements of a patient's chest and transferring that information over to the CyberKnife® computer to allow it to precisely follow the moving tumor as it delivers each radiation beam. This ensures an accurate target and does not require breath holding, which is more comfortable and takes less time for the patient. It also enables doctors to more effectively treat soft tissue tumors found in the lung, liver, kidney and pancreas.

Sinai is the only Maryland hospital offering CyberKnife®, a groundbreaking and unique radiation therapy that uses near real-time tracking to accurately locate and destroy tumors. The CyberKnife® gives doctors the ability to treat cancers and benign tumors, some of which have been determined to be inoperable, some of which have failed other types of treatment or others for which CyberKnife® is an alternative to conventional surgery, 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 be delivered to the tumor and kill it, while protecting surrounding healthy tissue from damage.

Other methods of stereotactic surgery, such as the Gamma Knife and TomoTherapy, are unable to target tumors with the same level of precision that the CyberKnife® can achieve. These other radiation therapies are also limited to the types of tumors and body sites that can be treated by the CyberKnife®.

Since it began operations in April 2003, the CyberKnife® Center at Sinai has treated more than 250 patients. The high precision and accuracy of the CyberKnife® enable doctors to achieve "whole body surgery without the scalpel” outcomes for lesions of the brain, spine, eye, lung, pancreas, liver, rectum, pelvic, muscles and bone tumors.

The CyberKnife® is one of many advanced treatment programs at the Alvin & Lois Lapidus Cancer Institute at Sinai. For more information on the CyberKnife® program at Sinai Hospital, go to www.lifebridgehealth.org/cyberknife or call 410-601-WELL.