Frederick hospital launches $6M cancer center

First patient had ‘no pain whatsoever,’ says director of CyberKnife center

After a year of training, the hospital’s nine-member medical team was eager to get its CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System under way this week, opening before the target date in mid-March. Three more patients were scheduled for treatment on Wednesday and 12 more cancer patients were being evaluated for the therapy, Chomiak said.

Unlike traditional radiation therapy, which requires upward of three months of treatments and lengthy recovery between thrice-weekly treatments, typical CyberKnife patients need only three sessions within three days. The CyberKnife, treatments, covered by most insurance policies, tackles tumors with a laser beam from up to 1,600 angles and is designed to adjust to movements, including lungs as they breathe. The precision reduces damages to surrounding healthy tissue and cuts back on recovery time.

Treatment costs vary with cancer types, but the entire therapy costs roughly up to $40,000 for up to five sessions and up to $50,000 for an open surgery. Chomiak anticipated that the system will treat patients with a wide variety of cancers, from brain and spinal to abdominal tumors. Nationwide, lung cancer and prostate cancer have seen the largest growth in CyberKnife therapy.

‘‘There aren’t many centers offering this technology,” Chomiak said between sessions on Wednesday. ‘‘We’ve been busy right from the start.”

Chomiak spearheaded the effort to fill the Central Maryland niche for the technology after establishing a thoracic CyberKnife practice at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore in 2004. He is one of two thoracic surgeons in Maryland who provide thoracic CyberKnife therapy and is a speaker on CyberKnife for the Accuray Corp. of California, which manufactures the technology.

As medical director of the Frederick center, Chomiak anticipates treating patients from as far as West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The Frederick center is the third such location in Maryland, after the Sinai Hospital and Franklin Square Hospital centers, and is the 76th in the nation. Worldwide, more than 40,000 patients have been treated with the technology and Chomiak himself has treated about 100 of them.

Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., was the first hospital on the East Coast to purchase CyberKnife, and has used it for inoperable tumors on the spine and neck since 2002. After technology upgrades and much success, the hospital installed its second system in July and has expanded treatment to other cancer types such as breast and prostate cancers.

‘‘The CyberKnife really exceeded our expectations, both in its effectiveness and in how many cancers we can treat with it,” said Dr. Gregory Gagnon, CyberKnife program director at Georgetown University Hospital, in a statement.

Frederick’s CyberKnife team includes Chomiak, Dr. David Djajaputra, Wayne Flowers, Dr. K.C. Lee, Carol Mastalerz, Janet Russo, Dr. Dustin Simonson, Tammy Welch and Dr. Ravi Yalamanchili.

Frederick Memorial Hospital had 11 percent more patients in 2007 than in 2006, the second fastest growth rate in the state. The CyberKnife is likely the most expensive piece of technology the hospital has invested in, said the hospital’s vice president and chief development officer, Kenneth Coffey.

The hospital has budgeted $6.6 million for technology upgrades and replacements and $7 million for information technology upgrades for fiscal 2008. It completed a $103 million building renovation project in late 2006 with a bevy of new equipment among its expansions and opened a high-tech neo-natal unit last fall.

The building project, which doubled the size of its emergency room and converted all the rooms to private, was funded in part by roughly $31 million in donations, Coffey said. Other technology upgrades, including the CyberKnife, have been funded by the hospital’s capital budget.

Now, FMH is gearing up for equipment that will allow staff to perform emergency surgery for heart attack patients. Now in the first stage, the technology should be ready in about a year, Coffey said.