Radiotherapy for breast cancer in CDT-WEST Center of Diagnostics and Therapy

The CDT-WEST Medical Center is located in Longerich, peaceful Cologne district.

The distance from the clinic to Cologne Bonn Airport (Konrad Adenauer International Airport) is 25 km.

• Modern equipment. The CDT-WEST specialists apply innovative German-made devices — Siemens Somatom 64-section CT and Siemens 1.5 Tesla AERA MRI. Therefore, doctors carry out high-quality diagnostic screening to make an accurate diagnosis.
• Affordable cost of diagnostic tests and therapy. CDT-WEST Center offers lower cost for radiation treatment than German large multi-specialty hospitals.

Doctors apply diagnostic techniques of the latest generation — CT, MRI, and PET-CT. They conduct such types of radiological tests as:

• MRI enterography or MRI Sellink (gastrointestinal tract screening)
• Magnetic resonance defecography (diagnosing of the pelvic organs defections)
• Magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (examining the liver, gallbladder, bile ducts, pancreas)
• MRI of the prostate
• CT and MR angiography (non-invasive methods of the blood vessels examination)
• CT scan of bones.

The CDT-WEST doctors specialize in the treatment of benign and malignant tumors of:

• gastrointestinal tract
• respiratory tract
• genitourinary system
• mammary glands
• head and neck
• nervous system and dura mater.

Radiotherapy is also used to treat joints diseases and inflammations.

Radiation therapists apply Elekta linear accelerators made by a Swedish company to affect the tumor accurately and do not harm healthy tissues.

Each device is equipped with the camera system. Therefore, doctors control the posture of the human body during the procedure, and accelerators adjust to the patient's breathing.

Radiation therapy methods

Depending on the type of tumor and its location, doctors conduct the following types of radiotherapy:

• 3D-conformal radiation therapy for adapting the rays to the shape of cancer and protecting healthy tissue from the adverse effects.

• Intensively modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for the radiation dose distribution over the tumor to get it out of the body completely.

• Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) for generating a three-dimensional image of the tumor and controlling the accuracy of the irradiation zone to preserve healthy cells.

• Volumetric Arc Radiation Therapy (VMAT) for treating tumors located close to vital organs — the prostate gland, rectum, female genitals, head, neck, and spinal cord. VMAT takes about 2 minutes (8 times faster than IMRT).

• Radiosurgery for affecting tumor with a high dose of radiation. Doctors use radiosurgery to treat tumors of the brain, liver, and lungs. A patient needs only 1 session compared to radiotherapy.

• Deep inspiration breath hold radiation therapy (DIBH) for treatment lungs, mammary glands, lymph nodes oncology. The system adjusts to the patient's movements during breathing and preserves healthy tissues. The technique allows avoiding complications (i.e., ischemic heart disease).

• Surface guided radiation therapy (SGRT) for breast, brain, and neck cancer treatment.

People receive treatment in an outpatient and inpatient basis.

The CDT-WEST specialists determine the patient's medical setting according to their health condition and treatment plan.