Sacro Cuore Don Calabria recently became the first hospital in Italy to use Brainlab’s new Elements Spine SRS radiosurgery planning software.
This software automatically plans treatments for complex parts of the body that typically require extensive experience and time.
The hospital used Elements Spine SRS in conjunction with the company’s ExacTrac patient positioning and monitoring technology. That helps the clinicians administer fast and precise image-guided radiation therapy.
“Elements Spine SRS has been developed exclusively for radiosurgery treatments of spinal tumors and metastases,” a Brainlab spokesperson told HCB News. “Due to its high automation level and focus on one specific indication, [it] creates highly conformal treatment plans that are much less dependent on the planner expertise.”
Treating spine tumors has historically been a risky procedure because it could potentially damage the spinal cord. Spine SRS accounts for variations in the curvature of the spine to ensure that high doses of radiation are delivered only to the tumor.
Spine SRS can also ensure that more bone marrow is preserved because it reduces target volume, compared to conventional external beam radiation fields. That could help patients return to chemotherapy more quickly after radiosurgery.
In addition to Sacro Cuore Don Calabria, the software has been used by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, the Instituto de Radioterapia - Fundacion Marie Curie in Argentina, and Hadassah University Hospital in Israel.
It received FDA clearance in September 2017, and several studies are underway in the U.S. Brainlab expects to commercially launch the software in this market in the near future.
