05:09 PM PDT on Friday, June 2, 2006

KING 5 Staff Reports

SEATTLE - There’s new hope for local cancer patients who've been told their tumors are inoperable. Swedish Medical Center Thursday unveiled the Cyberknife, the first of its kind in the Northwest.

It's not really a knife, but an ultra-precise way to deliver radiation anywhere in the body, without damaging surrounding tissues or essential organs.

A robotic arm continually tracks the tumor and zaps it from several angles.

“We're looking at treating lung tumors this way, we're looking at treatment prostate cancer this way, pancreatic tumors this way and now we can have a modality that can limit the radiation dose to this tissues and as a result, we can push the doses higher,” said Dr. Sandra Vermeulen of Swedish Medical Center.  

It also means fewer treatments and fewer side effects.

Prostate cancer patient Ladon Granstaff, who choose the Cyberknife over surgery, needed only a week's worth of sessions as opposed to the standard eight weeks with conventional radiation.

Because the technology is so new in the Northwest, insurance companies are still deciding what they'll cover.