What to expect with Cyberknife Treatment?

When you attend for your initial consultation, you will be met by one of highly experienced Oncologists who will talk in depth over all the treatment options that we have available, with the specific goal of finding the best treatment option for you.

When you have decided that the Cyberknife radiation therapyis the best treatment pathway, you will be contacted by our administrative team to attend for a follow up appointment. Depending on what was discussed at your initial consultation, we may need you to come for some more recent diagnostic scans before we proceed.

You will then be asked to attend for an appointment to consent for treatment, this involves you and your Oncologist completing a treatment consent form and it is another opportunity for you to ask any queries that you would like answered or further explained.

After you have been consented for your treatment, you will attend for an appointment at our CT (computed Tomography) scanner and will be met by one of our radiation therapy team. This is called a planning scan and is used solely for planning your individual treatment and not for diagnostic purposes.

This planning scan will be sent to our team of physicists and Radiation Oncologists where they will expertly pinpoint the exact location, shape and size of your tumour or disease. The plan calculated with the Cyberknife planning system is bespoke for each patient and enables us to calculate the best treatment for you.

It can take one to two weeks for our team to get your plan ready for treatment, when the plan is ready you will be contacted to come back to the Oncology Department at the Neuro Spinal Hospital for treatment.

When you arrive at the department for your first treatment you will be greeted by our team of highly experienced radiation therapists, who will guide you through your first session. They will go over all the aspects of your treatment and you can let them know of any queries or worries you have about the treatment.

Cyber Knife treatments usually last between 30-90 minutes. During this time the robotic arm of the Cyber Knife will position itself around you and direct approximately 80 – 150 narrow beams of radiation precisely on to the target. The target itself may move with breathing, but it is accurately tracked throughout the treatment using x-ray imaging and the sophisticated Cyber Knife tracking algorithms. In order to help with tracking, in some cases fiducials (small metal markers) may need to be implanted around the target. This is performed by a trained Radiologist prior to treatment.

You will meet your Oncologist weekly throughout to the treatment, to manage any side effects, referrals or queries you may have throughout the treatment.

We cannot wait to welcome you to our Radiation therapy department.