Attorney Ron Lowy was treated for prostate cancer with MRI-guided radiation. It's the newest radiation delivery technique. He said being inside the bore didn't bother him at all.
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"When they would put me in the machine, it was so comfortable, I would fall asleep every time and they'd wake me up at the end of the session, an hour later," detailed Lowy.
"The images are spectacular," described Alan Pollack, MD, a radiation oncologist at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.
While the 59-year-old napped inside the machine, Dr. Pollack and his colleagues used real-time MRI images to deliver the treatment precisely to the tumor.
"We're able to more directly visualize a tumor and make sure we don't miss it and to minimize the normal tissue that's being treated," Dr. Pollack told Ivanhoe.
Lowy needs a liver transplant. But he couldn't get one until his cancer was treated because anti-organ rejection drugs make cancer grow. After five MRI-guided radiation treatments, Lowy got good news.
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"I'm cancer-free," said Lowy.
Now Lowy says his future looks bright.
"It means there's nothing holding me up from getting a liver transplant and I'm excited about moving to the next step," Lowy told Ivanhoe.
Dr. Pollack said the new MRI-guided radiation treatment is more expensive than conventional radiation, but he expects the cost to come down eventually. This system only exists in a handful of hospitals around the country right now.