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Specialized surgery debuts at hospital
Mary Washington Hospital is now using its new linear accelerator for radiosurgery
Date published: 1/27/2012
BY JIM HALL Mary Washington Hospital put its new stereotactic radiosurgery equipment to use this week. Dr. Jeffrey Poffenbarger, a neurosurgeon at Mary Washington, performed the specialized surgery Monday afternoon at the new Regional Cancer Center on the hospital campus in Fredericksburg. Poffenbarger operated on a Fredericksburg-area resident who has brain cancer that had spread from elsewhere in her body. The procedure took about 30 minutes, and the patient went home about 30 minutes later. The patient was scheduled to receive three of the treatments this week, with a day of rest between treatments, Poffenbarger said. Poffenbarger used the hospital's new $4.5 million TruBeam linear accelerator. The machine, installed in August, has been used on cancer patients who need standard radiation treatments. Monday was the first time it was used for stereotactic radiosurgery, or SRS. The SRS procedure was follow-up treatment for the patient. Poffenbarger had operated on her at Mary Washington in August, when he opened her skull to remove the cancerous tumor. This time he did not open the skull, he said. Instead, with the help of Dr. John Chinault, radiation oncologist at the hospital, Poffenbarger directed a powerful beam of radiation to the spot where the tumor had been. "In the past, we would have radiated the whole brain or done nothing, to see if the tumor grew back," Poffenbarger said. Without radiation, tumors grow back 20-30 percent of the time, he said. "We treat the tumor bed and drop the recurrence rate to very small numbers, on the order of 5 percent," he said. The arrival of the SRS service means that some Fredericksburg-area cancer patients will no longer have to travel to Charlottesville for treatments. Poffenbarger has treated local patients with cranial cancers at the University of Virginia Health System for more than four years. Mary Washington has partnered with U.Va. for the SRS service here. "They're our mentors on this," he said. Poffenbarger said he was scheduled to return to Charlottesville this week to treat two more Fredericksburg-area patients. "We'll do all the others down here," he said. Dr. Timothy Sherwood, a thoracic surgeon at Mary Washington, is scheduled to use SRS procedures next week for treatment of a patient with lung cancer. Jim Hall: 540/374-5433
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Date published: 1/27/2012
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