PROSTATE cancer patients in Dorset are the first to benefit from the latest developments in radiotherapy.

New technology allows specialists to pinpoint tumours with greater accuracy, reducing damage to surrounding healthy tissue, cutting side-effects and increasing cure rates.

Dr Mike Bayne, clinical director for oncology services at Poole Hospital, said: “For the first time in Dorset, we can deliver precision radiation therapy treatments two to eight times faster than traditional methods.

“By leaving less time for tumour motion during dose delivery, the radiation dose can concentrate on doing what it does best – killing cancer cells.”

The development has come about with the addition of Image Guided Radiotherapy and Intensity Modulated Arc Therapy to two of the trust’s four linear accelerator machines following a £1.3million grant from the Department of Health and £400,000 from the government’s national cancer radiotherapy innovation fund last year.

Although the new tech-nology is currently only being used for prostate cancer, it will be phased in as a potentially curative treatment for other forms of the disease, such as head and neck, brain tumours, lung and rectal cancers.

Dr Bayne said: “When you are delivering radiotherapy, you want to be accurate to within a few millimetres.

“Every time the patient has to get on the couch, we need to make sure they are in exactly the same position.

“We can do a mini-CT scan before each treatment and if anything on the inside has changed, we can make adjustments.”

He added he expected the hospital would now be able to take part in trials to test whether bigger doses of radiation could be given at a time, shortening the overall length of treatment.