Radiation Oncology

Radiation Oncology department is a state of art oncology center at Yenepoya Medical College Hospital ( YMCH) that is supported by TATA trust. It was inaugurated in April 2022. Since April
2022, 411 patients were treated on external radiotherapy and 12 patients were treated on Brachytherapy. The department is adequately staffed with Radiation Oncologists, Medical Physicists, Radiation Safety Officers, Residents and supporting staffs.

It has comprehensive state of art Radiotherapy Equipments includes Varian TrueBeam, GammaMedplus iX HDR brachytherapy and PET-CT simulator. The truebeam has capable of delivering 3DCRT, IMRT, VMAT (Rapid Arc), IGRT and gated Treatment using 5 Photon energies and 5 Electron energies.

Salient Features of available techniques are as follows:

• 3-DCRT (3-Dimensional Radiation Therapy): This technique allows giving the highest possible dose of radiation to the tumor, while sparing the normal tissue as much as possible.
• IMRT (Intensity-modulated radiation therapy): This technique is an advanced type of radiation therapy technique used to shape the beam conformably to tumors and sparing the nearby Organs effectively.
• VMAT (Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy): VMAT can also be called Rapid Arc. VMAT is different to normal IMRT. In VMAT theradiotherapy machine rotates around the patient during the modulated beam delivery in an arc shape. This technique delivers the highly shaped beam conformably to tumors in a shorter time.
• IGRT (Image Guidance Radio Therapy): IGRT is a Guidance technique to ensure the patient position, tumor as well as organs locations precisely by using an on board X-ray image or a cone beam CT image before deliver the radiation dose. The verified locations of the tumor can be positioned using 6D (6-Dimensional) couch. This technique enables to deliver the highly shaped IMRT and VMAT beams to tumor accurately in order to achieve the expected clinical goal.
• RGSC ( Respiratory Gating for Scanners): Respiratory Gating and motion management is a gating technique that monitors breathing movement of the patient during CT as well as Treatment. It follows the breathing pattern of the patient and controls the radiation beam as per the tumor movement. It minimizes radiation exposure to healthy tissue.
• SRS/SRT/SBRT: Stereotactic Radio Surgery (SRS) is a technique to deliver higher dose to tumor in single fraction by using either Image guidance based IMRT or Rapid Arc.
• Stereotactic Radio Therapy (SRT) and SBRT (Stereotactic Body Radio Therapy) are the techniques to deliver higher dose to tumor in a few fractions by using either Image guidance based IMRT or Rapid Arc.
• Flattening Filter Free beam also called as True Beam with higher dose rate can be used in SRS/SRT/SBRT treatment plans to delivered highly conformal dose in shorter time.
• Brachytherapy:  Brachytherapy is a type of internal radiation therapy in which a small radiation source (Iridium-192) is placed in or near tumor. Brachytherapy is often used to treat cancers of the head and neck, breast, cervix, prostate and esophagus.  Brachytherapy allows delivering higher doses of radiation to more-specific areas (in or near tumor).
• PET-CT simulator: The PET-CT images enable better delineation of the tumor based on the metabolic activity. This system has the capable of acquiring 4DCT images which are used for gating treatment.