The Lacks Cancer Center is in ‘The Big Leagues’

The phone has been ringing off the hook at The Lacks Cancer Center at Saint Mary’s Health Care since it opened more than one year ago. “People are impressed,” said Tewfik Bichay, Medical Physicist, Radiation Oncology, who already has represented The Lacks Cancer Center at three national conferences this spring. “The name ‘Lacks’ is popping up more and more. We are recognized as leaders in the scientific community.” Health networks around the country are interested in the “latest and greatest” services that the Cancer Center provides to its patients, according to Bichay. “Our focus has been to not just look at what’s available now in regards to technology and treatment, but to look at what’s coming down the pipeline, to look ahead at what isn’t even out yet,” Bichay said. “And that has gotten us a lot of attention.”

From the use of Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) to Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT)/Tomotherapy to B-mode Acquisition and Targeting (BAT) to the upcoming Respiratory Gating technology, The Lacks Cancer Center at Saint Mary’s is “not your typical cancer facility ,” Bichay said. “We are Something More. For the kinds of services we offer, patients would typically have to go to Chicago or the Cleveland Clinic. What we’ve done here is put ourselves into the big leagues.”

While The Lacks Cancer Center was one of only about 60 or 70 centers out of about 2,300 in the world to first use IMRT, which generates high-resolution treatments to kill cancerous tumors, there recently has been “a big push toward image guidance therapy, or IGRT,” Bichay said. While IMRT is effective in treating cancer with very high doses of radiation, Bichay said it is difficult to see exactly where the radiation is going during the treatment. “The ability to generate a high resolution treatment outpaced the ability to see where you were going with certainty,” he said. “That’s where the whole idea of IGRT came from.”

The Cancer Center was one of the first to acquire a BAT in 2002, an ultrasound machine that assists radiation therapists in delivering treatment more accurately. And now the Center is only one of about 60 centers in the world to provide patients with TomoTherapy, a machine that combines IMRT and IGRT using a CT (Computed Tomography) scan to deliver radiation to the exact location of the cancer. “It uses a CT scan instead of ultrasound,” Bichay said. “Anywhere the CT scan can see, we can now see.” When the Cancer Center purchased the TomoTherapy machine, there were none in the world. “Because of our relationship with TomoTherapy that developed so early, we have been designated a TomoTherapy Center of Excellence,” Bichay said. “There are no others in the state of Michigan, only 20 worldwide and there will be no more.”

The fact that The Lacks Cancer Center was the first to use IMRT, BAT and now TomoTherapy, has generated a lot of excitement in the scientific community, Bichay said. “Now we get lots of calls to go speak around the country,” he added. Bichay recently gave a presentation at the second annual national TomoTherapy/IGRT Conference aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif. He also was invited this spring to speak at the annual meetings for the Academy of Radiation Oncology of Indiana and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine in Ohio. Bichay also participated in the annual MISTRO debate in Novi in March. This summer he will travel to South Korea to present at the World Congress of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. “When you are leaders like we are here, it is expected that we go and talk,” Bichay said.