Meerut gets 1st Radixact Helical Tomotherapy machine to treat cancer

Meerut: Meerut got its first machine for Radixact Helical Tomotherapy on Thursday. It will help treat cancer patients with modern radiation therapy.

The machine, which was first introduced in India in October 2018 in Kolkata., was inaugurated at a private hospital here. It is among the first few machines in India. The machine helps reduce certain side effects which a patient undergoing radiation by linear accelerator machine has to suffer from and also increases success rate in treating cancer from 64% to 85%.

“The Radixact Helical Tomotherapy is an advanced radiation machine. It is among the only four in the country and will reduce side effects like memory loss during brain radiation, blisters during throat radiation, chances of getting a tumour and others. Not just this, it also improves the chances of treating cancer from 64% to 85%,” said Dr Amit Jain, director, radiation oncology, Valentis Cancer Hospital.

The cost of the machine installed in the hospital here is Rs 25 crore and the treatment will cost between Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh for a patient. “The machine will also help us in giving the dosage properly, which was not possible in case of linear accelerator machine,” said Dr Jain.