Brachytherapy: Radioactive Implants to Fight Brain Tumors Mark Pioneering Turn

Brachytherapy is not a well-known term outside of the oncology and neuroscience healthcare fields, but more and more cancer patients are welcoming this treatment option. It refers to internal radiation therapy that uses capsules containing a radiation source implanted within the body.

It allows for the safe placement of radioactive source, often in or near a tumor, or the cavity that’s left after a tumor has been removed. Actually, brachytherapy has been around for decades, mostly as a treatment for gynecological and prostate cancers.

Now, brachytherapy is being used more often to treat more patients with recurring meningiomas, or brain metastases (cancer that has spread from other parts of the body). It is often the go-to therapy after surgeries and more common external radiation treatments have been exhausted.

Brachytherapy Expertise at Miami Neuroscience Institute

Before becoming the new chief medical executive at Miami Neuroscience Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida, earlier this year, Michael McDermott, M.D., played a pioneering role in brachytherapy as it applies to brain tumors, including the treatment of meningioma, a slow-growing tumor in the head that affects the brain. He co-authored many publications on the subject while at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF).

Dr. McDermott’s team at the Institute (he is pictured above at left, with neurosurgeon Vitaly Siomin, M.D.) and a team from Miami Cancer Institute, recently performed one of the first brachytherapy procedures in Florida using a new delivery device on a patient with a recurrent brain metastasis. The patient was implanted with specially encased, radiation-emitting cesium-131 capsules that target residual tumor cells. Most of the radiation is emitted over the first 30 days after the surgery.

“Brachytherapy provides us with another alternative for treatment, once some of the other therapies have failed,” explains Dr. McDermott. “So, it’s an additional form of treatment that is new … to our practice here at Miami Neuroscience Institute. I have a lot of experience with brachytherapy over the last 30 years at UCSF before I came to Miami Neuroscience Institute. And I’m delighted that we’re doing it now.”

[Transcript]
Speaker 1:
While brachytherapy is a form of radiation treatment, where the energies delivered at a short distance. So typically there's a radioactive isotope contained in a small capsule, which can be implanted into the tumor site in the body so the radiation source is within the tumor, the radiation source is not at a distance shooting the radiation beams at the tumor from a distance. Brachytherapy can be used for large newly-diagnosed brain metastases, recurrent brain metastases after prior forms of therapy including surgery, radiation. It can used for recurrent meningiomas that are of high grade, and it provides us another alternative for treatment once some of the other therapies have failed. I think one of the advantages we have at Baptist Health with the Miami Cancer Institute is the wide variety of treatment options and treatment delivery systems. It's unlike any place in the world that I've seen in terms of the radiation therapy facilities. And until I arrived, they didn't have anybody with experience doing brachytherapy, and so I'm happy to be able to add to the armamentarium of options for treatment for patients.