Local hospitals on the cutting edge

Both Enloe Medical Center and Feather River Hospital have recently installed cutting-edge radiotherapy systems.

Enloe became the fifth hospital in California to introduce the TrueBeam from Varian Medical Systems, a linear accelerator that offers patients a faster dose rate and treatment time, the ability to track tumors as they move and change over time and a treatment option for patients with complex cancers previously untreatable with radiotherapy, according to an Enloe press release. Feather River Hospital recently introduced similar technology in the Rapid Arc system, which also eradicates cancer cells in significantly less time than previous methods.

Both Feather River Hospital and Enloe treated their first patients with the new technologies earlier this month.