Animal Emergency Specialty Center Features Unique Radiation Therapy to Treat Cancer

Animal Emergency and Specialty Center is pleased to offer a unique form of radiation therapy to treat cancer.

Effective cancer therapy requires a team of professionals that can handle all aspects of patient care along with access to all of the latest treatment modalities. AESC’s team of board certified veterinary surgeons and oncologists are the most experienced in the region and are also pleased to offer the latest innovations in cancer therapy. One such recent addition is the Xoft™ brachytherapy system.

Many solid tumors require a combined treatment approach utilizing both surgery and a form of therapy called radiation therapy. In cases where the tumor can’t be surgically removed, the oncologist may recommend radiation therapy by itself. Traditionally, in either situation, the radiation therapy is administered using machines called linear accelerators. Linear accelerators are costly machines that require extensive facilities to house. Furthermore, the radiation therapy that is administered by these machines must traverse through normal healthy tissue to reach the cancerous tissue. This process leads to the extensive normal tissue damage that is frequently associated with radiation therapy.

The Xoft™ brachytherapy system is uniquely designed to deliver therapeutic radiation doses directly to the tumor tissue while bypassing the normal tissue. This system utilizes a thin flexible radiation source that delivers high dose rate photons directly to the center of cancerous tissue. This allows much higher treatment doses to be administered than with traditional linear accelerators. Further, these higher doses can be delivered in far fewer treatments while still avoiding or limiting normal tissue toxicity. This flexible system is highly mobile and requires minimal shielding to operate allowing for “state-of-the-art” intra-operative radiation treatments (AESC is the only facility in the southeast capable of offering intra-operative radiotherapy). The abilities of this system are so unique that our AESC oncology services have been recruited regionally by academia to treat previously untreatable cases.