Nicola Zingaretti cut the ribbon today, visiting the new structure of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital. With the expansion of services under the NHS agreement, there will be almost 2 patients who can be treated in a year. An intervention in the delicate sector of oncological treatments, to reduce waiting lists. The Center is equipped with TrueBeam technology, a device capable of destroying tumor tissue more selectively, with new perspectives for the treatment of tumors that have so far been difficult to fight with radiotherapy
Rome, 16 May 2014 - They are 10 thousand cancer patients undergo radiotherapy treatments every year in the Lazio Region and the demand for care shows a tendency to grow. With the inauguration of the new Radiotherapy Center today, the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital will be able to treat almost 2 patients a year. They will turn out reduced waiting times of the structure for more than two months a about 15-20 days for less urgent cases, 5-7 days for emergencies and 24 hours for emergencies. These are the numbers and the benefits for citizens of the agreement between the Lazio Region and Campus Bio-Medico of Rome, ratified this morning with the official cutting of the ribbon by the President of the Region, Nicola Zingaretti.
Zingaretti also announced the decision to exclude life-saving services from the spending limits set each year by the Health Service of the Lazio Region with the affiliated health facilities. Among these, also oncological treatments. “Healthcare must keep accounts in order – underlined the President of the Lazio Region – but in a civilized country, for services such as cancer treatments there can be no budget and bureaucracy that hold. Canceling the caps on life-saving benefits will contribute to the all-out fight to cut waiting lists in the Region. The accounts are coming back to normal – concluded Zingaretti – and we can consider it credible to finally bring the Region out of the commissioner by 2016".
The technological heart of the Radiotherapy Center of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital is thelinear accelerator TrueBeam, able to direct its beams against the tumor mass with millimeter precision, taking into account every minimum movement that the mass may undergo during treatment, as a result of breathing or other natural movements of the patient's body. A battle with high precision, regulated by physicists and doctors through virtual models that program the orientation of the beams of the beam before the treatment actually applied to the patient. It is on this precision of the 'bombing' action that technological innovation stakes the possibility of carrying out increasingly intense irradiations against the tumor, without however damaging the nearby healthy tissues and organs.
This allows you to improve the therapeutic index for some tumors that previously were not very treatable with radiotherapy, such as those of the pleura (mesotheliomas, in sharp increase due to asbestos pollution), of the prostate (due to the difficult position between the bladder and the rectum), of the spinal cord and of the upper abdomen: “Today, for example – observes the Prof. Lucio Trodella, Director of the Oncological Radiotherapy Unit of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital – you can tell the prostate cancer patient: you can undergo modern radiotherapy without the need for a scalpel and with the same chance of survival as surgery”. An advantage above all for elderly subjects, who are often inoperable. More generally, TrueBeam allows optimal treatment of all tumors close to particularly delicate or critical organs. This is the case of bone marrow cancer, for which traditional radiotherapy carries the risk of transverse myelitis, i.e. the breakage of the fragile molecular structure of the marrow, which is unable to support the 'weight' of radiotherapy. “Today, with these methods – continues the professor – instead we manage to reach even 2-3 millimeters away from the marrow, treating these tumors without side effects".
"The agreement with the Lazio Region for the enhancement of the Radiotherapy activity of our University Hospital - commented Felice Barela, President of theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma - it represents a concrete response from the Health Service to the citizens' need for treatment in a particularly delicate area such as oncology. We are very satisfied with this agreement and with the trust of the Region in the quality of the care provided by our Polyclinic. I also thank the many donors who have supported the Campus Bio-Medico of Rome in the creation of the new Center, which will be available to the whole community".
In the development plans of the Center it is also foreseen the activation, in the near future, of Brachytherapy, form of radiotherapy in which the radiation source is placed directly inside the body or in any case in the vicinity of the tumor mass. A method usable effectively for cancer of the cervix, prostate, breast, skin neoplasms and which can be adopted for tumors of many other anatomical regions.
