Swiss doctors have executed the country’s first clinical treatments using RapidArc™ technology from Varian Medical Systems. Clinicians carried out each patient’s scheduled radiotherapy course using RapidArc. IOSI (Istituto Oncologico della Svizzera Italiana) has become the first non-university European hospital to treat with the use of Varian’s RapidArc. The technology delivers a volumetric intensity-modulated radiation therapy in a single or multiple arcs of the treatment machine around the patient, delivering advanced image-guided IMRT much faster than the conventional IMRT.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) this month became the first U.S. medical center to offer a speedier cancer radiation therapy. The new RapidArc therapy, which is the next-generation of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), can turn a 20-minute radiotherapy session into a 90-second session for selected cancer patients. Additionally, the new therapy saves healthy human tissue from unwanted radiation exposure at rates that are similar to or better than other radiotherapy techniques. Faster radiation delivery times reduce the chances that a slight move will affect the accuracy of the radiotherapy targeting.