Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), also known as stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), is a highly focused radiation treatment that gives an intense dose of radiation concentrated on a tumor, while limiting the dose to the surrounding organs. It has become a treatment of choice for many people with limited volume tumors for whom surgery may not be an optimal treatment. Stanford has experience treating tumors throughout the body, with extracranial sites that include head and neck, thorax, abdomen (liver, pancreas, adrenal), prostate, pelvis and bone. SBRT for prostate cancer was pioneered by Stanford’s radiation oncologists.
What are its advantages?
High effectiveness and accuracy. For most indications, local tumor control rates of 90% can be achieved. SABR uses the latest image guidance technologies to ablate tumors with millimeter-scale accuracy. The ability to spare healthy tissue while intensifying the radiation dose is the primary advantage of SABR over other modalities, particularly when critical structures are located near the treatment area.
Non-invasive. SABR is non-invasive and comfortable for the patient.
Convenient, outpatient service. The vast majority of treatments are done as short outpatient visits of 30 minutes to an hour, requiring no hospitalization. Treatment courses are generally completed in 1-5 days, allowing more freedom for your patients’ busy lives, even if they are travelling from a distance, and resulting in little or no interruption of their scheduled chemotherapy or other cancer treatments.
Why Stanford?
Unparalleled experience. The first medical linear accelerator in the Western Hemisphere was developed at Stanford and the first patient was treated in 1956. CyberKnife® was developed at Stanford and we treated the first patient with it in 1994. Stanford Health Care is one of the only centers with two state-of-the-art CyberKnife systems, and we have treated more than 7,000 patients.
More recently, Stanford became the first center on the West Coast to treat patients with the new TrueBeam™ STx system and the first in the world to deliver SABR using RapidArc® and respiratory-gated RapidArc technologies on that system, offering unprecedented focusing of dose and treatment speed.
Multiple treatment platforms. Currently, we are one of the only centers in the world that uses CyberKnife (with Synchrony tracking), Trilogy (with RapidArc and respiratory gating), and TrueBeam STx SABR systems to treat our patients. Having all of these various technologies in one center, combined with our advanced treatment planning imaging capabilities including dedicated 4-D CT PET-CT, and MRI allows us the flexibility to individualize and select the most appropriate therapy for each patient.
Expertise and innovation. In addition to our leading-edge technology, Stanford has pioneered new treatment protocols and continues to drive clinical innovation in the field of radiation therapy. Stanford faculty completed the first prospective clinical trials of single-fraction SABR for lung tumors and liver tumors, as well as the world’s first prospective clinical trial of SABR for pancreas tumors. We have helped develop clinical guidelines and provide education and training to doctors around the world.
