Lung cancer patient Glenda Lamb shares her personal story.
Glenda Lamb, 68, was finding it harder and harder to breathe. A former smoker with emphysema, she had been hospitalized with congestive heart failure when her doctor discovered a tumor growing in her right lung. Her medical team at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis was able to treat her tumor using a new technique called image-guided stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT).
"Without this option, there would not have been anything they could do," Lamb said. "I feel so lucky, because with my heart and lung conditions, I couldn't have chemotherapy or surgery."
"A patient with respiratory disease doesn't have much healthy lung to spare," explains Jeffrey Bradley, MD, associate professor of radiation oncology at Washington University School of Medicine. "This kind of situation tends to make a patient ineligible for invasive surgery to remove the tumor."
The medical team at the Siteman Cancer Center delivered the advanced treatment with a new Trilogy® machine from Varian. This unique device combines a powerful medical linear accelerator that generates a carefully shaped and focused treatment beam with high-resolution imaging technology for pinpointing the tumor so that surrounding healthy tissues are preserved.
Unlike traditional therapy which often requires six to seven weeks of daily treatments, Lamb's stereotactic body radiotherapy treatment was delivered in just three treatments. The speed of treatment was essential for Lamb, who lives over 70 miles from St. Louis and had to travel back and forth with her daughter by car and train for each treatment.
Lamb's first post-treatment check up revealed that her tumor was shrinking nicely, but it was several more months before Bradley knew he had eradicated it. "She tolerated the treatment extremely well -- didn't miss a beat," Bradley said. At her 13-month follow-up visit, Glenda was cancer free. Two years after treatment, she has had no recurrence.
