New Delhi: From this week, one of India’s leading cancer hospitals, Tata Memorial CenterMumbai, is offering Proton Beam Therapy – the most advanced form of radiation treatment that can be given to specific types of cancer patients.
With this, the Tata Memorial Center has become the country’s first government center apart from treatment. Apollo Proton Cancer Center (APCC), a private center in Chennai. According to a statement sent by the Tata Memorial to ThePrint, although the plan to set up the center in Mumbai was first mooted in 2014, it was delayed by nearly a decade, mainly due to space constraints and then the Covid pandemic.
Proton beam therapy, which uses protons instead of X-rays used in conventional radiation treatment for cancer, is a state-of-the-art radiation technology with about 92 centers globally, most of them in Western countries. In 2019, Apollo Hospitals Group established APCC, the first such center in South Asia.
Although very expensive compared to conventional cancer therapy with the average cost per patient being around Rs 30 lakh, the advantage of proton beam therapy is that it allows more targeted treatment of cancerous tumors while causing significantly fewer side effects .
Depending on the hospital, conventional treatment for cancer costs around Rs 5-20 lakhs. In government hospitals, it can be as low as Rs 5 lakh depending on the rate of subsidy.
Speaking to ThePrint, Dr Rakesh Jalali, Medical Director and Head of Department, Radiation Oncology, APCC, said that while proton radiation is the most sophisticated form of therapy, generating it for use is a major technical and engineering challenge.
Industry sources said even setting up a proton beam unit costs more than Rs 100 crore.
Tata Memorial officials told ThePrint that the areas where the therapy has shown maximum clinical benefit are pediatric cancer, central nervous system tumours, head and neck tumors (skull base and paranasal sinuses), bone and prostate cancer and soft tissue tumors. Research is currently underway to show its usefulness for other cancers.
According to a Tata Memorial statement, 60 per cent of patients availing proton treatment at the hospital will pay no cost and about 40 per cent will pay about one-third of the standard rate for the treatment, which comes to around Rs 10 lakh. . These rates are as per the treatment pricing policy followed by the hospital based on the income level of the patient.
Who can benefit from the treatment?
As per the guidelines of the World Health OrganizationIt is estimated that 50–70 percent of all cancer patients may require radiation therapy sometime during treatment.
Tata Memorial Center officials said that according to global data, around 15-20 per cent of patients receiving radiation therapy could potentially benefit from treatment using proton beams.
A senior hospital official said, “About 50,000 children are diagnosed with cancer every year in India,” and added, “about 2,000 of them would potentially benefit from the proton beam.”
Similarly, a large number of patients in the adult age group will also benefit from the state-of-the-art therapy.
The cancer registry of the Indian Council of Medical Research showed that there were an estimated 1.46 million cancer cases in the country in 2022.
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How has been the experience at APCC?
Jalali said that Apollo’s Proton Cancer Center has treated around 1,000 patients so far in the last four years.
Jalali said that most cancer patients treated at APCC have historically been neurological cancers. However, the scope of proton therapy is now expanding to include the treatment of oral, gastrointestinal, breast, lung and prostate cancers as well as cancers affecting soft tissues.
According to him, about 1–15 years ago, proton centers were relatively few and had little access because they were difficult to maintain.
“Setting up the center is not enough, we need to maintain it and ensure that it operates 24/7 for years, like any other major technological achievement in medicine, engineering or space travel,” Jalali said. “Hence, it was limited to only 2-5 percent of the cancer patient population and all resources were put into pediatric cancer patients.”
According to them, while tumors can be controlled with conventional radiation, the side effects are significant and the quality of life for such patients may be compromised as they grow older. “It is for these reasons that protons were applied in pediatric cancer,” he said.
Jalali said that while childhood cancer can be successfully treated in 70-80 percent of cases, the high risk of side effects of conventional radiation therapy and radiation exposure can lead to second cancers.
“Therefore, proton therapy was preferred for pediatric patients. But its utility has improved significantly and is now being used beyond childhood cancer,” Jalali said.
(Editing by Richa Mishra)
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