Portneuf unveils new cancer treatment machine with improved capabilities

POCATELLO – A regional hospital has acquired a new machine that allows doctors enhanced ability to fight tumors in their patients.

A ribbon cutting was held Tuesday at Portneuf Cancer Center to unveil its new and improved linear accelerator, which uses radiation therapy to treat cancer.

“Portneuf is thrilled to add this advanced technology to our Cancer Center,” said Nate Carter, Interim CEO and COO of Portneuf Medical Center. “The new linear accelerator is instrumental in the expansion of our radiation therapy program.

While Portneuf already had a linear accelerator and used it to deliver radiation therapy, this new machine offers further treatment that the center previously had to send patients out of town to receive.

“We’ve had radiation here in town for decades, but as things advance and we need newer equipment, it was just time to get an updated treatment machine,” said Chelsey Aslett, a nurse practitioner.

A linear accelerator is a large machine that sends radiation to a patient’s tumor, killing cancer cells with the goal of weakening and, hopefully, eventually destroying the tumor. This is called external beam radiation, and rather than affecting the whole body, this equipment allows doctors to target the malignant growth.

“There’s a lot, especially with this machine, of amazing technology that allows us to create really high doses of radiation where we want it… while being able to carve out the dose and reduce the dose that goes to the organs that are close by,” explained Dr. Calvin Rock, a radiation oncologist at the center. “We’re able to treat what we want to treat and avoid treating what we don’t want to treat.”

Rock uses stage lighting as an analogy to explain how the machine does this.

“There’s all these different spotlights that are all shining towards the star, and each one of the individual lights is not that bright, but they all converge to create a really bright light just where you want it,” Rock said.

There are a wide variety of cancers that can be treated using the linear accelerator, and Rock said that whether or not a patient needs it for treatment has to be determined by their care team.

“It just totally depends on what type of cancer it is, where it is, and then how advanced or how early it is,” Rock said. “That’s why it’s important to meet with an expert.”

In order to operate the linear accelerator safely, Portneuf had to construct a new room called a “vault.” With walls of concrete four feet thick, the room protects the outside from any radiation that may escape.

Construction on the vault began in July last year and was complete last month. The first patient to use it received treatment on Oct. 22.

One of the treatments not previously offered at the center is radiosurgery, which is a procedure that treats cancer in a patient’s brain. With this new machine, Portneuf now offers radiosurgery.

Rock even said that there are some cases where patients with a vestibular schwannoma or a paraganglioma can be treated in a single session.

Another advantage of the new machine is that it has surface guidance tracking, allowing the treatment to be more precise.

“We can actually map out their skin and their surface to make sure that during the treatment there’s no movement that we don’t want,” Rock said.

The center only has one machine, so it delivers treatment frequently throughout the day. Rock estimated that the center treats between 15 to 30 patients a day with the new machine.

But there may come a day when Portneuf can treat even more patients per day, as the need for radiation therapy grows.

“Idaho’s growing, the population is growing, and there’s going to be more and more of a need. Eventually, our goal will be to have two different linear accelerators,” Rock said.