Cancer care gets personal

The future of cancer care will depend on the personalisation of treatment.This means tailoring treatment to each individual patient, rather than a 'one size fits all' approach.

With drugs the emphasis is on understanding the molecular switches that have gone wrong in an individual cancer patient.This allows the correct choice of drug combination to annihilate the cancer. With radiotherapy it’s all about precision. Getting it to exactly the right place, while avoiding collateral damage to surrounding tissue, is the key.

And the delivery of precise image modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and image guided radiotherapy (IGRT), both provided at CancerPartnersUK's cancer centres, is becoming a reality..for some. We now have fantastic diagnostic images from modern scanning techniques that allow us to see cancer with pinpoint accuracy. Converting this to a radiotherapy delivery plan that is equally sophisticated is the key to our future success to make sure we destroy the cancer with minimal damage to normal tissue.

Currently IMRT and IGRT are only available in certain centres to cancer patients in the UK. However, CancerPartnersUK has offered these types of treatments exclusively to all suitable patients right from the beginning. Personalised medicine is here to stay. In the end it is the only way we can make the best treatment available at an affordable price for everyone.

Find out more about our personalised approach to your treatment.

Karol Sikora
Medical Director

Breast cancer: our beams hit the spot

I’ve been an oncologist for more than 30 years. During that time I’ve seen a revolution in breast cancer treatment. Gone are the days of the radical mastectomy where the breast was removed along with a large amount of surrounding tissue, leaving horrible scars.

Nowadays we have more conservative treatment where the cancer is removed but the breast is left in tact. But to avoid the cancer coming back at the original site we have to give patients radiotherapy. The breast is a very challenging organ to irradiate.

Underneath there are critical structures such as the lungs, heart and nerves. Making sure these structures are outside the treatment site is essential to avoid long-term side effects.

Fortunately modern technology such as that offered at
CancerPartnersUK centres allows us to avoid side effects. The beam can be aimed precisely, using image guided radiotherapy (IGRT) and image modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) to enable us to ensure it’s going to the right place.

This kind of radiotherapy really does reduce the number of women that have to suffer the long term complications of treatment.

Find out more about our approach.

Karol Sikora
Medical Director