New radiotherapy technique highly successful with cancer patients
A patient undergoing a CT scan at Shanghai Proton and Heavy Ion Center.
The Shanghai Proton and Heavy Ion Center has received 1,263 cancer patients in the past three years since its official opening in May, 2015.
The treatments covered nearly 40 types of cancer, including the ten most prevalent cancers in the nation, it announced on Tuesday.
The center is China’s first — and the world’s third — such facility to use advanced forms of radiotherapy to treat cancer.
It uses cutting-edge beams of protons and heavy ions to target and kill cancerous tissue without harming nearby healthy tissue and cells.
Cancer in the brain, lungs, liver, prostate, nasopharynx and pancreas are the major types of cancer that the center targets, covering about 62 percent of all patients it has treated. Most cases showed positive effects, the center announced.
The center also received 21 patients from foreign countries, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau.
Apart from routine treatment, the center also conducted a long-term follow-up study on 35 cancer patients who received clinical trials in June 2014, before the center officially opened.
So far, only one patient died of cerebrovascular problems. The remaining 34 patients, or 97 percent, have survived for nearly four years already, and over 91 percent of patients’ cancer is under control, officials said.
