Denmark Celebrates Centre for Particle Therapy Treatments

The Danish Center for Particle Therapy (DCPT) at Aarhus University Hospital, was officially opened at the end of February by the Regional Council of Central Denmark Region, Anders Kühnau and attended by both the Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and the Chairman of the A.P. Møller Foundation, Ane Maersk Mc-Kinney Ugglaa. The DKK 800 million centre, equipped by Varian, is a three-treatment-room facility, housing a proton therapy system which has already begun patient treatments.

Funded by both the private and public sectors, the centre received a significant donation of DKK 250 million towards costs of the medical equipment from the Møller Foundation. “The foundation has a good tradition for supporting medical science, but we have never previously made such a large grant for a single piece of equipment,” said Ane Uggla, chair of the Møller Foundation. “We respect the level of scientific knowledge in Aarhus. The team around the National Centre for Particle Radiotherapy are very capable and we’ve found the project management to be inordinately sure-handed.”

"We are very pleased with our partnership with Varian on the installation and implementation of the ProBeam system and the ARIA® oncology information management and Eclipse™ treatment planning software," said Professor Morten Høyer, medical director at DCPT. "Since treating our first patient for a brain tumour, we were quickly able to begin treatments for five other brain tumour patients. We have used all the relevant capabilities of the system from the first day of operation, including multi-field optimisation, robust optimisation and cone-beam imaging. In April, our second treatment room will be operational and the extra capacity will allow for treatment of other diagnoses like head and neck cancer, paediatric cancers and breast cancer."

In Europe, ProBeam systems are already in clinical use in Germany, Switzerland, Russia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.