The center is due to open for patient care in summer 2013. That’s helping reduce the costs.”Ĭurrently, Scripps Proton Therapy Center is being developed by Advanced Particle Therapy, LLC of San Diego, CA, and will be operated by Scripps Health and Scripps Clinic Medical Group.
We are now running a 16-hour treatment day. At our facility, with 5 treatment rooms, we expect to treat up to 200 patients a day-this allows us to spread the unit cost per treatment. “Facilities are now designed for a high-patient throughput. Today, there are a number of vendors you can chose from, and there is competition in the market, including Varian, Hitachi, IBA, and Mevion,” said Dr. “The technology has gone from something that had to be built in a national laboratory to something you can now buy. However, with recent developments in proton therapy technology, cyclotrons have smaller footprints and run just a fraction of the cost of full-sized systems, thus changing the landscape from a $150 million investment to a $25 million solution. These traditional centers have 200-ton to 250-ton cyclotrons, requiring a very large infrastructure for treatment rooms. These factors contribute to the fact that over several decades just 2 large institutions in the United States-Loma Linda University Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA, and Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)-have had the patient volume and funding to feasibly offer proton therapy. 10,11 In addition to cost, survey participants also indicated they had reservations about return on investment due to the patient referral base, staffing requirements, and ongoing maintenance costs. In addition, there is the high cost of the large footprint and the technical complexity of traditional proton therapy systems.Ī recent study by KLAS, an independent research firm, found that concerns about market saturation and an estimated initial investment of $150 to $200 million would likely deter investors from healthcare facilities in proton therapy over the next 5 years. Chon.ĭespite the clinical benefits of proton therapy, broad adoption of the technique has been greatly limited by the enormous cost, which can run into the $100 millions. “Sparing healthy tissue and organs helps reduce the impact of side effects common in traditional photon therapy and allows for treatment in difficult locations of the body,” said Dr. This can result in sparing 60% to 80% of the healthy surrounding tissue, indicated Brian Chon, MD, Medical Director, The ProCure Proton Therapy Center of New Jersey. Protons deliver the radiation to the tumor, and then the proton beam stops, so that there is not excess radiation delivered beyond the tumor,” explained Henry Tsai, MD, a radiation oncologist at The ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Somerset, NJ. “The advantage of proton therapy is that proton particles have mass, and you can control the depth of penetration better, as opposed to an x-ray that passes through the patient’s body.
2 This reduces the negative side effects of treatment and helps sustain patient quality of life. The unique dose distribution of protons and spread-out Bragg peak enable the delivery of highly conformal radiation to cancers located adjacent to critical normal structures without damaging healthy surrounding tissue. That is changing, however, as manufacturers develop more compact systems and cost-effective models, which lower the initial investment, enabling hospitals to offer a new life saving treatment, often resulting in a better quality of life. While proton therapy has been used clinically for more than 2 decades, the high cost of the technology has limited access to the treatment. Carl Rossi, Medical Director of Scripps Proton Therapy Center, San Diego, CA. “What protons allow you to do is deliver the same type of treatment of x-ray therapy while sparing more normal tissue than with x-ray therapy,” explained Dr. With proton therapy, the majority of radiation energy from a proton beam is actually deposited in the targeted cancer, 2 causing less damage to healthy tissue compared with other radiation alternatives, and resulting in fewer short- and long-term side effects. As an alternative to conventional treatments, patients increasingly have access to proton radiation therapy. An estimated 60% of all cancer patients undergo some sort of radiation therapy during their course of treatment, 1 and despite advances in radiation therapy technology, many suffer from side effects caused by conventional photon-based (x-ray) radiation therapy.
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