First patient in Australia treated with revolutionary new Brainlab radiosurgery software

New Automatic Brain Metastases Planning software has been used for the first time in Australia at Epworth HealthCare in Richmond to deliver a tailored radiosurgery treatment to a patient with metastatic brain cancer. The patient, a 48-year-old woman with metastatic brain tumors from a primary melanoma, had dose delivered to ten metastases during her 25 minute treatment.

The current standard treatment of multiple metastases, known as Whole Brain Radiation Therapy (WBRT), involves applying radiation to the entire brain which can lead to cognitive deficits. Automatic Brain Metastases Planning uses a patented algorithm to deliver highly conformal treatments while minimizing dose spread to surrounding normal tissue.  

“Automatic Brain Metastases Planning offers the opportunity to not only efficiently and effectively treat brain metastases, but also help us to prevent unnecessary loss of brain function that can occur with whole brain radiation therapy, such as memory loss or other cognitive deficits,” commented Michael Dally, radiation oncologist at Epworth.

When targeted with stereotactic radiosurgery individually, total treatment time increases for each metastasis at the same rate as the number of targets. Automatic Brain Metastases Planning, however, allows for time-efficient precision targeting of several metastases in a single session, taking advantage of the rotation of the machine to deliver a conformity plan.

“As the first hospital in Asia Pacific to offer Automatic Brain Metastases Planning treatments, Epworth is poised to become a leading facility in the region for the treatment of multiple brain metastases as well as contributing to the overall advancements of stereotactic radiosurgery  developments,” said Phil Cardamone, President Asia/Pacific at Brainlab.

To learn more about Automatic Brain Metastases Planning, visit brainlab.com/brainmets.