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2006 Press Releases

Hospital at Cutting Edge of Medical Advances.

LONG BRANCH, NJ, October 19, 2006 - At Monmouth Medical Center, doctors and technicians take CAT scans of patients just seconds before starting daily treatment, giving doctors an accurate picture of a tumor's location so they do not hit as much normal tissue with radiation.

The Long Branch hospital's doctors also use a tiny blade that spins 8,000 revolutions per minute to cut and clear plaque from patients' arteries. This technology could lead to studies that doctors hope will tell them which patients respond best to certain cholesterol-lowering drugs.

In medicine, there have been tremendous advances over the years, including in the treatment of patients with cancer and heart disease.

Since the 1970s, Monmouth Medical has often "led the way in surgical innovation,'' said Dr. Michael A. Goldfarb, the chairman and program director of its surgery department.

In 1990, doctors at the hospital did the first laparoscopic gallbladder removal in the state, and in 1996, Monmouth Medical doctors were the first in the nation to perform an incisionless surgical procedure to unblock tear ducts of patients whose eyes continuously water.

A more recent innovation is cone beam imaging, a type of cancer treatment and one method of image-guided radiation therapy.

Monmouth Medical doctors began using cone beam imaging in September, and they believe they are only the second center in the Northeast using the technology. A medical center in Delaware also uses it, they said.

"It will most likely be the next advance in radiation/oncology,'' said Dr. Mitchell Weiss, chairman of the radiation/oncology department at Monmouth Medical.

About 50 percent of all cancer patients get radiation treatment during their illness. Generally, radiation is administered five days a week for five to eight weeks.

Upgraded software

In the past, doctors used weekly X-rays to verify both a cancer patient's position on a treatment table and the position of the tumor. As a patient breathes, a tumor can move slightly. So doctors treat a slightly larger area with the radiation, to be sure the treatment hits the entire tumor, Weiss said.

But with the new upgraded software, a much more detailed CAT scan image is generated seconds before treatment, allowing doctors to more accurately target the tumor, and treat less of the normal tissue, he said.

"It's quick and efficient,'' he said.

It may also allow doctors to re-treat certain patients because it minimizes the overlap of radiation to surrounding, he althy tissue, Weiss said.

Monmouth Medical has been a pilot site in the past for Siemens, a company that makes medical products, and has hosted hundreds of visits so those in the medical field can see how new types of technology works. Because it is a pilot site, the hospital gets the chance to get new technology upgrades early, Weiss said.

The cone beam imaging, made by Siemens, is one of those upgrades, he said.

Another advancement in cancer treatment is called prone breast radiation.

Monmouth Medical is one of the places where breast cancer patients can receive that treatment, done while they are lying on a their stomachs on a special table, Weiss said.

That's important because lung and heart tissue does not get treated, he said. Under traditional treatment methods, a small portion of the lungs is treated, and so is the heart if the patient has cancer in her left breast, he said.

Removing plaque

And while Weiss is fluent in the language of advances in cancer treatment, it's another doctor at Monmouth Medical who can explain the SilverHawk.

The SilverHawk helps patients who have plaque in their arteries … especially in their legs … because of cholesterol, hypertension, tobacco use, diabetes or a genetic predisposition, said Dr. Paul B. Haser, the assistant program director for the surgery department.

He brought the SilverHawk to Monmouth Medical about three years ago after using it at his previous job at a hospital in Newark.

With balloons or stents, plaque is pushed to the side of the arteries, but the SilverHawk removes it, restoring blood flow in arteries to much better levels, he said.

It is also a relatively low-risk procedure that can be done with just local anesthesia and mild sedation.

A blade spins to cut out the plaque, which is then collected inside a cone. That means scientists will be able to study the plaque in the future, looking for genetic markers to figure out which patients best respond to certain types of cholesterol lowering-medications, Haser said.

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