A new and advanced therapy, which has come to India for the first time, is going to give cancer patients the hope of faster and better recovery.
Rapid Arc or Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (Vmat), which has been in use in the west for over a year, is much faster than the conventional intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT).
The new therapy takes only one to two minutes as compared to 8-15 minutes in the conventional therapy. It also harms lesser number of healthy tissues.
Dr Madhur Garg, advisory board member of American College of Radiology and medical director and associate professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA, who was in the city to meet fellow oncologists said, “This is the latest advancement in the field of radiation therapy. Vmat is going to prove beneficial in many ways for cancer patients. It however requires highly trained professionals to carry out the therapy. Vmat reduces the time span for which a patient is exposed to the radiation and thus, minimises the chances of radiation risks.” Various studies published have shown that Vmat is more effective. A study published by Upstate Medical University, College of Medicine, Syracuse stated, “Vmat therapy for prostate cancer has dosimetric advantages for critical structures, notably for high-dose regions compared to fixed-field IMRT, without compromising on the coverage This may translate into reduced acute and chronic toxicity.”
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NCP tries to get RPI’s dalit base
Age Correspondent
Mumbai
May 29: The Nationalist Congress Party is not leaving any stone unturned to derail the proposed alliance between the Shiv Sena and Republican Party of India. In a bid to make things difficult for RPI leader Ramdas Athawale and the Sena, the NCP is going to propose the renaming of Dadar railway station as Chaityabhoomi.
The NCP will launch “Samajik Hakka Parishad” on the occasion of its 12th anniversary on June 10. A senior NCP leader said that during this parishad, the party will move a proposal to rename Dadar railway station. “Chaityabhoomi, where Dr Ambedkar was cremated, is near Dadar. It is a place of pilgrimage for lakhs of followers of Dr Ambedkar. His followers visit the place every year on April 14 (Dr Ambedkar’s birth anniversary) and his death anniversary. In 1996-97, the then Union railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan had proposed to rename Dadar railway station as Chaityabhoomi. But that proposal did not materialise as such a proposal has to come from the state government. At that time, the Sena-BJP government did not even send the proposal to the Centre,” an NCP leader said.