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Non-Surgical Procedure To Blast Lung Cancer

If you made a New Year's resolution to quit smoking, here's more incentive to stick with it: More than 150,000 Americans will likely die of lung cancer this year.

Quitting can greatly reduce your chance of getting sick, but cancer isn't completely preventable. The good news is tumors are having a harder time hiding these days with a new, non-surgical procedure.

Ceil Hall cherishes memories galore; this Wisconsin farm girl who married the love of her life Charlie, 58 years ago. Her decades of photos show children and grandchildren.

Although some more recent images document some uninvited guests. A cancerous tumor was found in each of Hall's lungs. It was metastatic cancer, meaning it had spread, first to a chest muscle.

"Three months later there was another one, and that was on my spine. That was also treated with CyberKnife. And three months after that there was another one on the adrenal gland," said Hall.

She was immediately scheduled for surgery and was offered chemotherapy as follow-up care.

Instead she opted to attack each tumor with CyberKnife. It basically delivers pinpoint, targeted radiation to tissue at two to three times the saturation of conventional radiation in a fraction of the time.

"Each beam is pretty weak," said Dr. Andrew Fink, HealthEast Medical Director of Surgery. "But then rotates slightly, and shoots another beam. Rotates slightly, shoots another beam. Does that 150 to 200 times."

The advantage is greater precision to blast the tumor with every beam, while healthy surrounding tissues are mostly spared.

"You can see how close it is to the kidney ... the bowel, the spinal cord, the aorta. These are all what we call critical structures," said Fink.

Fink said CyberKnife is often a good option for those whose medical complications would make standard surgery too risky. A study currently underway comparing it to surgery for early stage lung cancers shows it to be quite promising.

"We're able to kill that cancer at least 80 percent of the time, which is comparable to surgery," Fink said.

Hall has had no new growths in six months. She also was spared the down time from surgery and the side-effects of chemo, and she is amazed by the technology.

"A robotic machine can deliver radiation. And as you're lying on the table breathing, the machine breathes with you," recalled Hall.

Hall is a former smoker, but she quit nearly 30 years ago. For those of you who'd like a little free help quitting and for a virtual tour of how the CyberKnife works, click on the links below.