Docrates Cancer Center is the first and currently the only private hospital in the Nordic countries that comprehensively specialises in cancer treatment. It operates in Helsinki, Finland. It characterises its operations as those complementing the public sector. Docrates Oy was established in 2006 and the hospital started its operations at the premises of Eira Hospital in autumn 2007. It moved to its own premises in Jätkäsaari, Helsinki, in 2009, where it has hospital rights. There is a ward and Health and Recovery Center located at Docrates Cancer Center. Among other things, diagnostics, pharmacotherapy, radiation therapy and isotopic treatments are carried out at the hospital. Cancer surgeries are performed in partner hospitals. Docrates also participates in clinical trials and the testing and development of new treatments.
The property of Docrates at Saukonpaadenranta is a part of the regional building project of Länsisatama in Jätkäsaari. The hospital's co-operation partners also work there.
Docrates Oy was established in 2006 by physicist Pekka Aalto, doctor Timo Joensuu and physicist Harri Puurunen.
Pekka Aalto (born 1945) has participated in the development of the targeted radiotherapy that saves tissue, and acted as an entrepreneur and business manager in the field of radiotherapy technology. Timo Joensuu, associate professor of medical oncology (born 1959), has as a doctor and a researcher specialised in cancer drugs as well as radiotherapy and isotopic treatments. He has acted as the chief clinical director of Docrates hospital for years. Starting from March 2014, specialist in medical oncology and radiotherapy, Associate Professor Tom Wiklund has acted as the chief clinical director of the hospital. Harri Puurunen (born 1959) has as a physicist participated in the projects of Dosetek, directed by Aalto, and worked with corporate financing in the public sector and as the director of technology of Tekes. Puurunen was the managing director of Docrates during 2006 and 2010 and during 2011 and 2012 and thereafter the CFO. During 2010 and 2011, the managing director was Marco Hautalahti. In 2012, Siv Schalin was appointed as the managing director. She was the managing director of GE Healthcare Finland. In 2017, Ilpo Tolonen started as the managing director of Docrates. Ilpo Tolonen was previously the managing director in MSD Finland and Baltics.
The regular staff of doctors of the hospital include: Kalevi Kairemo, chief physician of molecular radiotherapy and nuclear medicine; Tuomo Alanko, chief physician of medical oncology; Martti Ala-Opas, chief urologist; Kaarina Partanen, chief radiologist; and Leila Vaalavirta, chief oncologist of radiotherapy.
A group of private individuals became shareholders of Docrates Oy and, in 2008, Helsingin Lääkärikeskus, currently Aava Terveyspalvelut Oy, became the largest owner.
The number of employees is more than 50 persons. In addition to that, approximately 30 specialist doctors and other clinical experts in oncology work at the hospital. [1] [2] The number of patient visits was 17,000 per year. A fifth of all patients were from abroad. The majority of foreign patients come from Russia, the Nordic Countries and the Baltic Countries. [3]
Timo Joensuu, associate professor and chief clinical director of Docrates Cancer Center, worked in the cancer clinic of HYKS (Helsinki University Central Hospital) for 15 years. He met Aalto in 1995. Joensuu was the first in the Nordic Countries to employ IMRT (intensity-modulated radiation therapy). A precisely destroying dose is directed at a tumour but surrounding tissues are protected. Even before that a stereotactic treatment was developed where the treatment is directed tridimensionally with the help of computer and magnetic resonance imagery. The synthesis of the IMRT and the stereotactic treatment is known as the Rapid Arc-technique developed in Finland that speeds up the treatment. New treatments make the radiation therapy curing cancer almost harmless without serious side effects of treatments. They improve the treatment outcome. [4] [5]
One of the recent methods in radiation therapy related to cancer care is called HDR (High Dose Rate) internal brachytherapy. Prior to HDR, LDR (Low Dose Rate) brachytherapy was commonly in use for prostate cancer. Chief urologist of Docrates, Dr. Martti Ala-Opas, was the first one in Finland who utilized LDR brachytherapy for prostate cancer. Docrates Cancer Center has the longest and the most extensive experience in HDR-brachytherapy treatments for prostate cancer in Finland. New radiation therapy methods allow tumors to be treated in a more targeted way using bigger doses of radiation, yet having better treatments results with less side effects.
Radiation therapy or radiotherapy, often abbreviated RT, RTx, or XRT, is a therapy using ionizing radiation, generally provided as part of cancer treatment to control or kill malignant cells and normally delivered by a linear accelerator. Radiation therapy may be curative in a number of types of cancer if they are localized to one area of the body. It may also be used as part of adjuvant therapy, to prevent tumor recurrence after surgery to remove a primary malignant tumor. Radiation therapy is synergistic with chemotherapy, and has been used before, during, and after chemotherapy in susceptible cancers. The subspecialty of oncology concerned with radiotherapy is called radiation oncology. A physician who practices in this subspecialty is a radiation oncologist.
External beam radiotherapy (EBRT) is the most common form of radiotherapy. The patient sits or lies on a couch and an external source of ionizing radiation is pointed at a particular part of the body. In contrast to brachytherapy and unsealed source radiotherapy, in which the radiation source is inside the body, external beam radiotherapy directs the radiation at the tumour from outside the body. Orthovoltage ("superficial") X-rays are used for treating skin cancer and superficial structures. Megavoltage X-rays are used to treat deep-seated tumours, whereas megavoltage electron beams are typically used to treat superficial lesions extending to a depth of approximately 5 cm. X-rays and electron beams are by far the most widely used sources for external beam radiotherapy. A small number of centers operate experimental and pilot programs employing beams of heavier particles, particularly protons, owing to the rapid dropoff in absorbed dose beneath the depth of the target.
A radiation oncologist is a specialist physician who uses ionizing radiation in the treatment of cancer. Radiation oncology is one of the three primary specialties, the other two being surgical and medical oncology, involved in the treatment of cancer. Radiation can be given as a curative modality, either alone or in combination with surgery and/or chemotherapy. It may also be used palliatively, to relieve symptoms in patients with incurable cancers. A radiation oncologist may also use radiation to treat some benign diseases, including benign tumors. In some countries, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are controlled by a single oncologist who is a "clinical oncologist". Radiation oncologists work closely with other physicians such as surgical oncologists, interventional radiologists, internal medicine subspecialists, and medical oncologists, as well as medical physicists and technicians as part of the multi-disciplinary cancer team. Radiation oncologists undergo four years of oncology-specific training whereas oncologists who deliver chemotherapy have two years of additional training in cancer care during fellowship after internal medicine residency in the United States.
Brachytherapy is a form of radiation therapy where a sealed radiation source is placed inside or next to the area requiring treatment. Brachy is Greek for short. Brachytherapy is commonly used as an effective treatment for cervical, prostate, breast, esophageal and skin cancer and can also be used to treat tumours in many other body sites. Treatment results have demonstrated that the cancer-cure rates of brachytherapy are either comparable to surgery and external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) or are improved when used in combination with these techniques. Brachytherapy can be used alone or in combination with other therapies such as surgery, EBRT and chemotherapy.
In medicine, proton therapy, or proton radiotherapy, is a type of particle therapy that uses a beam of protons to irradiate diseased tissue, most often to treat cancer. The chief advantage of proton therapy over other types of external beam radiotherapy is that the dose of protons is deposited over a narrow range of depth; hence in minimal entry, exit, or scattered radiation dose to healthy nearby tissues.
Elekta is a global Swedish company that develops and produces radiation therapy and radiosurgery-related equipment and clinical management for the treatment of cancerand brain disorders. Elekta has a global presence in more than 120 countries, with over 40 offices around the world and about 4,700 employees.
In radiotherapy, radiation treatment planning (RTP) is the process in which a team consisting of radiation oncologists, radiation therapist, medical physicists and medical dosimetrists plan the appropriate external beam radiotherapy or internal brachytherapy treatment technique for a patient with cancer.
Tomotherapy is a radiation therapy modality, in which the patient is scanned across a modulated strip-beam, so that only one “slice” of the target is exposed at any one time by the linear accelerator (linac) beam. The three components distinctive to this modality are: (1) a collimator pair that defines the length of the strip, (2) a binary multileaf collimator whose leaves open and close during treatment to modulate the strip’s intensity, and (3) a couch that scans the patient across the beam at a fixed speed during the treatment delivery.
Intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) is radiation therapy that is administered during surgery directly in the operating room.
Image-guided radiation therapy is the process of frequent imaging, during a course of radiation treatment, used to direct the treatment, position the patient, and compare to the pre-therapy imaging from the treatment plan. Immediately prior to, or during, a treatment fraction, the patient is localized in the treatment room in the same position as planned from the reference imaging dataset. An example of IGRT would include comparison of a cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) dataset, acquired on the treatment machine, with the computed tomography (CT) dataset from planning. IGRT would also include matching planar kilovoltage (kV) radiographs or megavoltage (MV) images with digital reconstructed radiographs (DRRs) from the planning CT.
Breast cancer management takes different approaches depending on physical and biological characteristics of the disease, as well as the age, over-all health and personal preferences of the patient. Treatment types can be classified into local therapy and systemic treatment. Local therapy is most efficacious in early stage breast cancer, while systemic therapy is generally justified in advanced and metastatic disease, or in diseases with specific phenotypes.
Brachytherapy is a type of radiotherapy, or radiation treatment, offered to certain cancer patients. There are two types of brachytherapy – high dose-rate (HDR) and low dose-rate (LDR). LDR brachytherapy is the one most commonly used to treat prostate cancer. It may be referred to as 'seed implantation' or it may be called 'pinhole surgery'.
Treatment for prostate cancer may involve active surveillance, surgery, radiation therapy – including brachytherapy and external-beam radiation therapy, proton therapy, high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), cryosurgery, hormonal therapy, chemotherapy, or some combination. Treatments also extend to survivorship based interventions. These interventions are focused on five domains including: physical symptoms, psychological symptoms, surveillance, health promotion and care coordination. However, a published review has found only high levels of evidence for interventions that target physical and psychological symptom management and health promotion, with no reviews of interventions for either care coordination or surveillance. The favored treatment option depends on the stage of the disease, the Gleason score, and the PSA level. Other important factors include the man's age, his general health, and his feelings about potential treatments and their possible side-effects. Because all treatments can have significant side-effects, such as erectile dysfunction and urinary incontinence, treatment discussions often focus on balancing the goals of therapy with the risks of lifestyle alterations.
Nanobiotix is a biotechnology company that uses nanomedicine to develop new radiotherapy techniques for cancer patients. The company is headquartered in Paris, with additional corporate offices in New York and Massachusetts.
Gujarat Cancer & Research Institute (GCRI) is a state owned cancer research institute in Gujarat, India. It was established in 1972. It is one of the 25 government funded Regional Cancer Centres in India.
Professor Minesh P. Mehta, MD, FASTRO, is an American radiation oncologist and physician-scientist of Indian origin, Ugandan birth, Zambian Schooling and American Training, who contributed to the field of oncology for more than two and half decades.
Timo Joensuu is a Finnish oncologist, associate professor of clinical oncology in University of Helsinki, researcher of new cancer treatments and developer of an internationally new hospital concept. He is a co-founder of Docrates Cancer Center in Helsinki and was its clinical director until 2014, after which he has been concentrating mostly on clinical work with the patients as the chief oncologist.
Gel dosimeters, also called Fricke gel dosimeters, are manufactured from radiation sensitive chemicals that, upon irradiation with ionising radiation, undergo a fundamental change in their properties as a function of the absorbed radiation dose.
Jay Steven Loeffler is an American physician at Massachusetts General Hospital where he has served as Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology since 2000. He is the Herman and Joan Suit Professor of Radiation Oncology and Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Daniel Przybysz is a Brazilian Radiation-Oncologist. His practice is mainly focused on lung cancer treatment and high technology approaches toward better patient care.