Radiotherapy Options

Dr. Cavey and his team personalize and match treatment plans to specific cancer types. At Texas Radiotherapy we focus on treatments to deliver the best cure rate for you. Below are some of the radiotherapy options that we review with our patients.

IMRT

Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is an advanced type of radiation therapy delivered by a linear accelerator used to treat cancer and noncancerous tumors. IMRT uses advanced technology to manipulate beams of radiation to conform to the shape of a tumor. IMRT uses multiple small photon beams of varying intensities to precisely irradiate a tumor. The radiation intensity of each beam is modulated, and the beam shape changes throughout each treatment. The goal of IMRT is to conform the radiation dose to the target and to avoid or substantially reduce exposure of healthy tissue to limit the side effects of treatment. IMRT is particularly beneficial in complex cases when the target is directly adjacent to critical structures (head-and-neck cancers, brain tumors, prostate cancer).

TomoHelical® - Proven Clinical Superiority over other machines

At Texas Radiotherapy, our linear accelerator is a Radixact from Accuray. The Radixact delivers external radiation therapy in an even more advanced fashion than the VMAT / RapidArc delivered by other linear accelerators in the market. With the helical delivery of the Radixact, patient’s treatments are much more precisely delivered; high-doses are better confined to the target and dose to the surrounding normal tissues is reduced even further.

The following is a link to a clinical trial that compared TomoHelical versus RapidArc in patients with head-and-neck tumors. The study found that patients treated with TomoHelical had IMPROVED SURVIVAL WITH LESS SIDE EFFECTS than those treated with RapidArc.

Brachytherapy

Brachytherapy is internal radiation therapy. Dr. Cavey has extensive experience in many forms of brachytherapy for treating a wide variety of cancers. Dr. Cavey is one of the few doctors in the DFW Metroplex that regularly performs prostate seed implants, which are the GOLD STANDARD of treatment for prostate cancer. In a prostate seed implant, radioactive pellets are implanted directly into the prostate gland and much higher doses of radiation therapy are able to be delivered safely to the prostate cancer cells than with any other means even more than with proton therapy.

Dr. Cavey was trained by Drs. Grimm, Blasko and Sylvester in Seattle, the founders of modern-day prostate brachytherapy. Dr. Cavey participated in a quality assurance program administered by the Seattle doctors that verified and validated the quality of his implants. Dr. Cavey’s implants meet or exceed the criteria of those performed by the former Seattle Prostate Institute.

In addition, Dr. Cavey now performs MRI-assisted RadioSurgery, the next generation of prostate brachytherapy. MRI imaging is utilized to design and guide the placement of the radioactive seeds during the implant procedure, which leads to better and safer seed implants than without MRI-assistance.

Dr. Cavey Talks Technology:

Brachytherapy

Dr. Cavey Talks Technology:

Stereotactic Radiotherapy

Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) is a technique of delivering high doses of radiation therapy delivered with extreme precision to targets in the brain.

Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) or Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) is a technique of delivering extremely precise doses of radiation therapy to ablate tumors throughout the body. Treatments consist of one to five treatments either given daily or 2-3 days per week. Tumors in the brain, head-and-neck, lung, liver, spine and prostate are commonly treated. SBRT can be delivered via a number of different machine platforms including Radixact and Cyberknife.

His expertise includes:

Brain tumors (metastases and recurrent gliomas)
Acoustic neuromas / Vestibular schwannomas
Trigeminal neuralgia
Recurrent head-and-neck and skull base cancers
Lung tumors (primary lung cancers and lung metastases)
Liver tumors (Hepatocellular carcinomas and liver metastases)
Spine tumors
Prostate cancer
Pancreatic cancers
Lymph node recurrences

At Texas Radiotherapy, we employ Synchrony and Adaptive Radiotherapy, which enables superior tumor tracking and the ability to adjust treatment with changes in tumor size. The Radixact® system at Texas Radiotherapy has the same technology, such as Synchrony, that is available in the Cyberknife but is able to deliver treatments much quicker than with the Cyberknife. Treatment times on the Radixact are 5-10 minutes whereas similar treatments on the Cyberknife may take 45-90 minutes.