OKLAHOMA CITY, 8 December 2009 – The second treatment room is open and treating patients at the ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City. Opening the gantry doubles the number of patients and expands the types of tumors the Center can treat with proton therapy, an alternative to X-ray radiation that spares healthy tissue and results in far fewer short- and long-term treatment side effects.
"As each new treatment room opens, our opportunity to help patients who can benefit from proton therapy increases," said W.C. Goad, M.D., medical director of the Center and a founder of Radiation Medicine Associates (RMA), the radiation oncology practice that provides clinical care to the Center. "The gantry, which can rotate the proton beam 360 degrees around the patient, expands our ability to treat more clinically challenging tumors."
The Center opened in July and can now treat patients diagnosed with a broader range of tumor types, including more anatomically complex tumors such as base of skull, tumors along the spinal cord and many pediatric cancers. Other tumor types being treated at the Center include head and neck, brain, central nervous system, and prostate, among others. The final two treatment rooms will open by spring 2010 and the Center will be operating at full capacity by next summer, treating up to 1,500 patients a year.
The Center has an affiliation with INTEGRIS Health, the state's largest hospital system. INTEGRIS's new, state-of-the art Cancer Institute of Oklahoma, located adjacent to the ProCure Center, provides patients with additional medical services that they may need while undergoing proton therapy.
The ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City is the sixth center in the country to provide proton therapy and the first in ProCure's network of centers to provide this advanced radiation therapy to patients with cancer. Currently, construction is under way on a ProCure facility in suburban Chicago and ProCure has centers in development in suburban Detroit, South Florida, Seattle and Somerset, New Jersey.
About 60,000 people worldwide have been treated with protons – more than 30,000 in the U.S. – since it was first used more than 50 years ago. More than 3,200 of the 18,000 Oklahomans diagnosed with cancer this year would be considered candidates for proton therapy. The treatment has become more widely available as imaging technology has advanced and tumors can be precisely located and defined, which is important with proton therapy.
ABOUT PROCURE TREATMENT CENTERS
ProCure Treatment Centers, Inc., based in Bloomington, Ind., was founded in 2005 to improve the lives of patients with cancer by increasing access to proton therapy. ProCure collaborates with leading radiation oncology practices and hospitals and provides management leadership and a comprehensive approach for the design, construction, financing, staffing, training and day-to-day operations of world-class proton therapy centers. ProCure's solution reduces the time, cost and effort necessary to create a facility. ProCure is the only company in the world with a center open and treating patients, another under construction (Warrenville, Ill.) and four others in development (Seattle; Somerset, N.J.; South Florida; and Detroit, Mich.). ProCure's Training and Development Center is the first facility in the world dedicated exclusively to proton therapy. For more information, visit www.procure.com.
About Radiation Medicine Associates (RMA)
Radiation Medicine Associates, a leading radiation oncology practice in Oklahoma City, is bringing proton therapy, the most advanced external radiation therapy treatment, to Oklahoma City. They are well known and respected clinical physicians with a long history of clinical excellence. The doctors practice at the leading institutions in the area and have pioneered the newest and most appropriate cancer treatment technologies in the community. The physicians are longstanding members of the Oklahoma community who have dedicated their professional lives to the improvement of cancer treatment.
About INTEGRIS Health
INTEGRIS Health is the state's largest Oklahoma-owned not-for-profit healthcare corporation, with hospitals, rehabilitation centers, physician clinics, mental health facilities, fitness centers, independent living centers and home health agencies throughout much of the state. Through its affiliates, INTEGRIS Health operates 13 hospitals, led in the Oklahoma City area by INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center and INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center. The organization has affiliated mental health providers in 50 Oklahoma towns and cities, and offers hospice services through Hospice of Oklahoma County.