PORTLAND, Ore. — An $8 million tool to treat cancer has arrived in Portland. Providence Portland Medical Center is the first facility in the Pacific Northwest, and the first community hospital in the nation to offer the new technology, which uses MRI-guided radiation for pin-point accuracy to maximize tumor killing and minimize damage to normal tissue.
Providence began treating their first patient, Don Smith, this past month.
“I have a lot of live for,” Smith said. “I'm very, very happy that I've come here, and they basically saved my life.”
In April 2019, a routine colonoscopy revealed the 53-year-old had Stage 4 rectal cancer. The husband, father of four, and grandpa to three underwent chemotherapy and traditional radiation.
“That's full radiation, where they radiate the lower extremity of my body,” Smith said. “Everything got it. It was okay for the first 10 or 12 and then it became like getting sunburned.”
Even after surgery Smith still needed more treatment, and that traditional radiation was no longer an option.
“I couldn't have full radiation," he said. "It would have been pretty hard on my body, since having it the 28 days before. So that's when they thought I'd be a good candidate for this new machine that they were bringing in."
Enter MR-Linac, a state-of-the-art therapy that delivers a high dose of radiation to a specific area over a matter of days rather than weeks.
In combines the technology of MRI’s to visualize tumors with targeted radiation.
“It's really a physics problem to try and be able to deliver radiation using a linear accelerator in the presence of a magnetic field,” Dr. Kristina Young said.
Young is a radiation oncologist and Providence Portland Medical Center. She treated Smith with the new technology, which gives her pin-point accuracy, maximizing tumor-killing while minimizing damage to normal tissue.
“With this technology we're actually able to, in real time, watch the tumors move as patients' breathe, or as a bubble of gas passes through the intestines," Young said. "And we can turn the radiation on and off to allow for sparing of those normal tissues as that movement is occurring. So that real-time targeting allows us to have a much tighter field and allows us to have way fewer side effects for patients.”
Providence Portland Medical Center was able to purchase the $8 million machine because of longtime benefactor Elsie Franz Finley.
For doctors and their patients, it's a game-changer.
“It gives us just an extra advantage to be able to get the upper hand on cancer, which is so unusual to be able to do,” Young said.
“It's tremendous. I'm very, very grateful for everything that this hospital, Providence, has done,” Smith said. “I feel very good that I have a new lease on life.”
For more information about MR-Linac and the Elsie Franz Finley Radiation Oncology Center at Providence Portland Medical Center CLICK HERE.