October 1, 2019 – El Camino Health’s Mountain View hospital is the first on the West Coast to begin offering GammaTile™ Therapy, a new approach to treating recurrent brain tumors. GammaTile Therapy is a FDA-cleared, surgically targeted radiation therapy (STaRT) that is designed to delay tumor regrowth for patients with brain tumors. The first patient on the West Coast was treated by neurosurgeon James Doty, MD, and radiation oncologist Robert Sinha, MD, at El Camino Health.
“In our pursuit to heal and relieve suffering, El Camino Health is often at the forefront of adoption of innovations that offer new ways to deliver care and improve our patients’ quality of life,” Dr. Doty said. “GammaTile Therapy enables collaboration with radiation oncologists to treat patients with recurrent brain tumors quickly and efficiently.”
Aggressive brain tumors tend to be resistant to current treatments and have a high likelihood of recurrence. GammaTile is FDA-cleared for patients with recurrent brain tumors. GammaTile consists of a bioresorbable, conformable 3D-collagen tile embedded with a Cesium radiation source. GammaTile is placed at the time of surgery so that it immediately begins to target residual tumor cells with radiation while limiting the impact on healthy brain tissue.
GammaTile Therapy offers advantages over other treatments for patients undergoing surgery for recurrent brain tumors. A course of External Beam Radiation Therapy (EBRT), for example, requires daily treatments for up to six weeks; in contrast, patients treated with GammaTile Therapy require no additional trips to the hospital or clinic. Additionally, many patients may not be candidates for EBRT at the time of tumor recurrence because the risk of additional EBRT outweighs the potential benefits. Finally, those patients who may be candidates for EBRT typically have to wait two weeks or more for surgical wound healing before beginning treatment, allowing residual tumor cells to replicate during this waiting period.
“Once GammaTiles are implanted, the treatment begins immediately, which may have significant clinical advantages in terms of tumor control,” Dr. Sinha said. “GammaTile offers hope for patients who have few options and we are excited to add it to our arsenal in fight against brain tumors.”
Additional data supporting the efficacy and safety profile of the therapy for patients with recurrent, previously treated meningiomas was published in the Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS), the official journal of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Clinical data from other types of tumors was presented at the AANS Annual Scientific Meeting in April.
“We are honored to be working with the brain tumor specialists at El Camino Health to deploy GammaTile Therapy for the purpose of improving the lives of patients with brain tumors,” said Matt Likens, president and CEO of GT MedTech.
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About El Camino Health
El Camino Health includes two nonprofit acute care hospitals in Los Gatos and Mountain View and urgent care, multi-specialty care and primary care locations across Santa Clara County. Hospital key medical specialties include cancer, heart and vascular, lifestyle medicine, men’s health, mental health and addictions, lung, mother-baby, orthopedic and spine, stroke and urology. Affiliated partners include Silicon Valley Medical Development, El Camino Health Foundation and Concern.
About GT Medical Technologies, Inc.
Driven to overcome the limitations of current treatments for recurrent brain tumors and raise the standard of care, a team of brain tumor specialists joined forces and formed GT Medical Technologies with a purpose to prevent disease progression and improve quality of life for patients with recurrent brain tumors. GammaTile Therapy received FDA 510(k) regulatory clearance for the treatment of all types of recurrent brain tumors in July 2018 and has an established CMS code for Medicare reimbursement. Extensive clinical expertise informed the design of GammaTile Therapy, and deep medical device experience guides the company. The company is headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. For more information, visit https://www.gtmedtech.com/
