The Department of Radio-Oncology of the Cheng Ching General Hospital in Zhong Gang Campus was established in November 1998. Upon the establishment, it was equipped with Siemens Primus medical linear accelerator, Toshiba simulation, Theraplan Plus 3-dimensional treatment planning system. Three months later, radiation therapy was introduced to the Department, followed by the opening of the Center for Radiation Therapy. The Hospital therefore owned the first complete radiation therapy equipment.
In July 1999, the Zhong Gang Campus bought the “Brain LAB M3 infrared ray navigation system”, and set the milestone to treating hepatic cancer with radiation therapy. In December 2001, a huge amount of budget was invested in upgrading the radiation therapy to the Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT, SIEMENS). The Hospital further invested in the Brain LAB IGRT Image-Guided Radiation Therapy in January 2005, and named it “6D Radiation Therapy”, which has accuracy error controlled lower than 1mm.
The goal that the Hospital has been striving to achieve is to develop new therapeutic technology, in order to increase cancer patient’s survival rate. In February 2009, the Department of Radio-Oncology of the Zhong Gang Campus launched the 5th generation upgrade of medical devices, and purchased RapidArc costing almost a hundred million New Taiwan dollars.
In September 2012, the Hospital upgraded the radio therapy device to “TrueBeam”, which allows the completion of radio therapy within 3 minutes with high accuracy, and high dosage treatment. It significantly shortens the treatment time. For patients with hepatic tumor smaller than 5cm in diameter, they require radio therapy in 1000-1200cGy every day for 5 days, giving a total of 5000-6000cGy. The high dosage and short therapeutic time are expected to kill cancer cells. It takes only 30 minutes of treatment every day.
Since February 1999, the Hospital has treated more than 4000 patients. Patients in need of radio therapy please telephone the information counter, and nurses will recommend appropriate attending physicians based on patient’s health condition, medical history and current treatment. Nurse will request patients to mail information about health condition, testing results and current treatment outcomes to the Hospital. International patients can contact our collaborating hospitals (eg. BENQ Hospital in Nanjing) so your CT, MRT and blood testing results can be forwarded to us by cloud computing dicom interface. Your attending physician will judge whether you are able to undergo radio therapy, and provide you further medical consultation.