Sacred Heart Hospital
is a 241-bed Catholic medical center located in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Founded in 1912, Sacred Heart Hospital offers a full range of
advanced medical services, ranging from open-heart surgery and
neuroscience to oncology, orthopedics and women’s health. A network
of physician practices throughout Lehigh and Northampton Counties
provide complete primary and pediatric medical care to the region’s
residents.
The mission of the
Center for Cancer Care at Sacred Heart Hospital is to provide
the finest possible treatment with compassion, care and concern.
Sacred Heart is well known for its cancer treatment, dating back
to the early 1900s. Sacred Heart was the first hospital in the
Lehigh Valley metropolitan area to introduce radiation therapy
as part of its treatment for cancer in 1936, and was the first
to introduce IMRT treatments in May of 1998. The Center for Cancer
Care continues that tradition, as it was the first to bring two
new treatments to the area within the last year.
In February 2002, Sacred
Heart began performing treatments with the B-mode Acquisition
and Targeting System, or BAT. The BAT machine is an ultrasound-based
patient positioning system that can rapidly pinpoint target organs
at the time of a radiation therapy treatment, which in turn reduces
the need for targeting margins which have traditionally been used
to compensate for errors in localization. The result is that the
physicians are able to maximize radiation doses while minimizing
side effects, therefore increasing the chance of disease-free
survival.
When the Center for
Cancer Care began to include Partial Breast Irradiation using
the MammoSite Device as part of its treatment for breast cancer
in May 2002, it was one of just 30 hospitals nationwide to offer
the treatment. Partial Breast Irradiation (PBI), also known as
brachytherapy, is a method of treating cancer by placing radioactive
seeds directly into the site of the cancer, via a series of catheters,
and fighting it from the inside out. The total elapsed time of
the PBI treatment is one week, or five to six days, instead of
six to seven weeks. This benefit, along with the results that
show a much lower recurrence rate, make PBI a powerful new tool
in the fight against breast cancer.
For a referral to a
Sacred Heart cancer specialist, call the Center for Cancer Care
at (610) 776-4674.
