Country’s premier hospital chain, Apollo Hospitals has added another feather to its cap. The Apollo Speciality Cancer Hospital has come up with a robot radiotherapy machine, Cyberknife, which uses a very little dosage of radiation to kill cancer cells by reducing the course of treatment to less than a week with sub millimeter accuracy.

It is learnt that the cost of this hi-tech robotic radiosurgery system, Cyberknife is Rs 35 crore.

The company is now planning to come up with two more robotic radio surgery systems in two cities. However, the company has not decided the two locations so far.  

Commenting over this new technology, Dr Sanjay Chandrasekar, senior consultant, radiation oncology said, “This is breakthrough technology, a combination of image guidance and computer-controlled robotics, to deliver a extremely precise dose of radiation to the tumour and a minimum dose to the surrounding healthy tissues. Even if the patient moves, the image guidance technology tracks it with unfailing accuracy.”

Chandrasker further said that for the treatment of cancer, the time taken by this technology is far less than that of the conventional cancer therapies. Citing an example, he said that if it takes four weeks in the case of traditional radio surgery, Cyberknife procedure will be only four days. Add to this, the new technology is considered as a pain-free procedure. But the treatment through this new technology would cost Rs 4 to Rs 5 lakhs.

Medical experts believe that the new technology would be very beneficial in the treatment of tumours in brain, spine, lung, prostate, pancreatic and other recurrent tumours.