A Des Moines hospital is the first in Iowa to perform brain surgery using a new type of treatment called GammaTile therapy. Dr. Sam Schroeder is a radiation oncologist at UnityPoint Health’s John Stoddard Cancer Center, and he says a postage stamp-sized chip that’s embedded with radiation is implanted in the brain after a tumor is removed. Aggressive brain tumors, which impact more than 200,000 Americans a year, tend to resist traditional treatments and have a high recurrence rate.
If a brain tumor returns, he says it’s often treated with external radiation, and a surgeon may go back in and remove the new tumor. That’s where this new technique might best be used.
The first GammaTile surgery in Iowa was performed at UnityPoint in Des Moines within the last month, and Schroeder says the technique may only be used on 10 or 20 patients, at least initially.
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The FDA-cleared procedure, called Surgically Targeted Radiation Therapy or STaRT, is designed to delay tumor regrowth while preserving healthy brain tissue. Schroeder says it targets tumor cells precisely where recurrence is most likely, bringing new hope to people with life-threatening brain tumors.