…brain, , breast and lung cancer. At any rate, that’s what I saw on the news very recently.
I have lung cancer, and am inoperable due to emphysema. So, I asked my oncologist if I were a cyberknife candidate and he said no.
It might be mere coincidence, but my hospital is not one of the 3 Connecticut hospitals that has Cyberknife technology.
I’d appreciate your inputs (and I know you’re not my doctor, etc.).
The CyberKnife isn’t a laser, it’s a narrow computer-driven radiation beam. Effectively treating a brain tumor with a broad beam can deliver high enough doses to surrounding brain structures to cause severe brain damage, so what’s done is shoot a lower dose narrow beam at the tumor and rotate it around so that the beam always intersects in the tumor giving it a high dose while moving the beam through the rest of the brain so that the non-tumor dose is low enough in any one place to not overly damage healthy tissue.
Tumors in other areas of the body may not have highly radiation sensitive healthy tissue nearby so that a standard beam technique can give a high enough tumor dose without excessively killing the healthy tissue.
In your particular case that may be true, or your cancer may be of a type or so advanced that radiation therapy won’t be sufficiently effective. Your oncologist knows the details of his treatment plan for you. You certainly have the right to have him explain it to you.