Innovating technique shortens the periods of cancer treatment, assures a higher precision of diagnosis and less costs for patients.

Benefits of Brachytherapy
The ones who suffer from cancer have to face not only a fight for their recovery but also have to face high economic costs involved in the treatments. According to some studies of the American Cancer Society, carried out in 2010, this is one of the most expensive illnesses in Medicine (see study).

Currently, in the developed countries, in most of America and even in Chile people are treated with Brachytherapy of low rate or with radical surgeries, which means more invasive procedures of high cost and with impact in their quality of life.

Today, thanks to an innovating technique called Brachytherapy of high rate, patients –in most of the cases- do not require hospitalization and get a much more precise and accurate treatment, due to the fact that the radiation is carried out in a concentrated way and with higher accuracy according to results given by the previous exams of resonance or scanner, which indicate chemotherapeutics which organs are in risk.

Oncological Clinic of Fundación Arturo López Pérez offers this treatment at lower costs than in the United States and in several other countries of Latin America, being a real alternative for foreign patients who want to shorten the period of therapy, increasing the tumoral control and reducing the complications and count on practically outpatient treatment.

Who can receive the treatment?
The Brachytherapy of high rate is recommended for patients who suffer from prostate cancer, breast, head and neck, skin, bronchus pulmonary, esophagus, gynecological and sarcoma, among others.

People suffering from tumors in inaccessible places or too extensive for being completely covered, like bones, kidneys or pancreas cannot be submitted to this treatment.

The treatment
The treatment consists on applying high doses of radiotherapy, through a radioactive seed being in contact with the tumor. This one measures 3 millimeters long per 0,8 millimeters of width and is similar to the tip of a pin. The cutting-edge machine has a series of steel cables. It is like a little programmable robot that inserts through one of its cables the seed in the body of the patient, by means of a special device allowing the doctor to move it to the exact point where the radiation must be applied.

As it is radiation, to protect the medical team, the machine is operated by remote control and inside a room of procedures counting on high standards of isolation and protection, bunker type. A team of physicists and technologists are responsible for its programming, depending on the treatment indicated by the doctors. For example, for  prostate cancer needles are put in the building, inside the prostate. After making the necessary calculations, the machine is connected and the seed travels each needle and makes irradiation. 

Why Oncology Clinic of Falp is the best option for this procedure?
Because it is the unique private center having this technology and counting on doctors highly specialized in cancer, having national and international prestige, which has turn the clinic into a national center of reference in the treatment of cancer in Chile.