By Shawn Kirkpatrick
Opelika Observer

East Alabama Medical Center has a new way to battle cancer.
The TrueBeam Radiotherapy System is now set up and ready to go at the cancer treatment center.
It delivers pinpoint radiotherapy with precision directly to the patient’s tumor.
The new machine is more powerful than the older machine at the center, giving higher doses in a shorter amount of time. Each patient is treated in about 15 minutes.
“Treatment time is so much better. Aligning the patients up and allowing us to be more precise where the radiation is going to go is so much better,” said EAMC Radiation Oncologist Dr. John Cabelka. “It’s nice for us, it’s great for the patients, but it’s great for the community, too. Look to the person to your left and look to the person on your right, and one out of three will get cancer in their lifetime and will need chemotherapy or radiation.”
The TrueBeam will eventually be moved to the new cancer center once it is built and another system will also be added.
The cost for each TrueBeam is $3 million.The first patient received treatment earlier this week.