Malta Upgrades Radiotherapy Services, Following IAEA Support

Computed tomography scans are one of the most important advances in medical imaging over the past 50 years. They extend the clinical benefits of traditional X-ray imaging to produce detailed pictures of internal organs, allowing healthcare professionals to locate tumours and blood clots, to detect internal injuries, and to better plan therapy and procedures, among other applications.

“CT scanners are indispensable in modern medicine, providing 3D, cross-sectional views of the human body including soft and hard tissues, normal organs and various pathologies,” said Daniel Berger, a Radiotherapy Medical Physicist at the IAEA.  “In oncology, CT scanners are essential equipment in the diagnosis and staging of malignancy, but also in facilitating radiotherapy treatment planning.”

Malta, with a population of 500,000, has almost 2000 new cancer patients annually, increasing 5 per cent per year. Breast, colon and prostate cancer are the most common.

The Oncology Centre is home to Malta’s only CT scanner. While the old machine has enabled the Centre to apply a number of clinically-valuable imaging techniques, newer technologies offer improved quality and better positional accuracy, resulting in lower radiation doses needed from medical imaging, improving patient outcomes and reducing risks.

One advanced technique now possible thanks to the use of the new scanner is stereotactic radiotherapy, which allows very high doses of radiotherapy to be delivered to small target sites, with extremely low doses to surrounding tissues. “This can be beneficial in two situations,” said Kamal Akbarov, an IAEA Radiation Oncologist. “First, a standard dose can be delivered with a lower risk of long-term side effects: this is of particular benefit in the treatment of children, who have a long life ahead of them. And second, patients with very resistant tumours may be treated with higher radiotherapy doses, without any additional side effects.”

Training in stereotactic radiotherapy is currently under way at the Centre, and expert missions will be organized through the IAEA’s technical cooperation programme, with plans to introduce brachytherapy to SAMOC in 2022 and 2023.