New treatment for cancer
NHS England has invested £15m over three years to assess the use of SABR through its Commissioning through Evaluation initiative, which will allow up to 750 new patients a year to access the treatment at 17 centres across the country.
SABR is a modern, more precise delivery technique of radiotherapy which delivers high doses of radiation while causing less damage to surrounding healthy tissue than conventional radiotherapy.
Evidence shows that SABR can be effective when used to treat non-small cell lung cancer and the NHS already funds this. However, there is less clinical evidence to show that SABR is effective for other cancers.
A patient’s clinician will identify whether they are a potential candidate for the programme and they will be referred on to a participating centre where appropriate.
Thiagarajan Sridhar , consultant oncologist at Leicester’s Hospitals, explains: “SABR is especially important for patients with advanced cancer which has spread to other parts of the body and is a radical treatment opposed to conventional options like chemotherapy.
“The treatment usually involves giving a very high dose of radiotherapy usually lasting only a few days. Furthermore with our clinical and technical expertise SABR is very well tolerated with very little side effects. Being able to offer this at our hospitals is another big step towards improving survival of all our cancer patients.”
Leicester’s Hospitals will be ready to treat patients with some conditions using SABR within the next few months. Lorraine Williams, head of radiotherapy at Leicester Royal Infirmary, added: “We are absolutely delighted to be able to offer this exciting new advanced form of radiotherapy to our patients. We anticipate approximately 25 patients a year will require this specialised treatment and hope to start as soon as possible. I would like to thank everyone in the radiotherapy team who have worked very hard towards this successful bid.”