Cancer Patients Get New Option High-Tech Machine Will Provide Treatment Closer To Home

Cancer patients in North Idaho won’t have to travel to Spokane for radiation treatments once a linear accelerator is installed at North Idaho Cancer Center.

Dozens of North Idaho cancer patients, about 10 percent of Sacred Heart’s radiation patients, will be affected. Breast cancer patients are one group that soon will be able to get treatment closer to home.

The accelerator arrived Tuesday in three parts. Altogether it weighs about 30,000 pounds. It will replace an older, “workhorse” machine that was not suitable for all radiation treatments.

The Varian-2100 CD linear accelerator “is the same machine that’s at Sacred Heart and Deaconess,” said David Davenport, director of radiation oncology at the cancer center. “It’s the latest for radiation treatments.”

The equipment can tailor radiation treatments for different types of cancer by manipulating the radiation field. It can adjust radiation according to the size and density of a tumor for precise treatment.

The accelerator will take three weeks to install and another three weeks for a physicist to fine tune it. The equipment will be housed in a vault with 4- to 7-1/2-foot thick concrete walls.

“We’ve been planning this for the last three years,” Davenport said.

The accelerator cost about $1.5 million, and the remodeling to contain it cost about another $500,000. The cost was split between Kootenai Medical Center and Sacred Heart Medical Center, which are in a joint venture to operate North Idaho Radiation Therapy.

The joint venture began in 1988, when Sacred Heart considered opening a radiation treatment center in North Idaho. KMC was considering the same, so the two joined to share in revenue and expenses, explained Tom Legal, KMC’s vice president of finance.

The cancer center plans to hold an open house once the new equipment is installed and ready to use.

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