John R. Adler: “My goal is to treat more than 4 million patients every year who don’t get access to radiosurgery treatment right now”
Madrid, 22 March 2023. John R. Adler, a world renowned figure in radiosurgery, has been in Spain to visit the facilities of Instituto de Radiocirugía Avanzada (IRCA), located in the Hospital Viamed Santa Elena.
After the welcome by Mr. Paulo Goncalves, CEO of the Viamed Salud group, Dr. Adler and the entire IRCA team led by neurosurgeon Dr. Kita Sallabanda, held a meeting in which they presented the ZAP-X technology and the success stories of patients who have been treated with it in Spain. The meeting began by sharing details about ZAP-X with the attendees. It is an innovative technology that can treat a wide variety of cranial and cervical lesions, as well as addressing various pathologies such as malignant and benign tumours or even oncological pain -until now untreatable-, neuropathic pain, vascular malformations, epilepsy, or various psychiatric diseases.
The ZAP-X treatment does not need to be carried out in a bunker: it is located above ground in a room with large windows, which enhances the patient’s emotional experience.
Among the many features of the ZAP-X, its precision and efficient distribution of radiation stand out. Thanks to its real-time positioning control system, it has a margin of error of less than 1 millimetre. In addition, it has 16,200 inputs through which radiation can be delivered to be effective and minimise the likelihood of side effects.
Dr. Kita Sallabanda explained that “the project started with IRCA just three months ago and since then, the results have been very promising in all the cases that have been treated, more than twenty so far”.
Dr. Adler is renowned as the creator of CyberKnife, the machine that preceded ZAP-X in time and earned him his reputation as a pioneer of technological development in stereotactic radiosurgery. In his speech, Adler explained the differences with its predecessor technology: “With ZAP-X, the technology has been simplified so that more people can reach and work with it, and at the same time the costs have been reduced. It is possible to treat the area with a much more precise and optimal precision in achieving results”. He adds: “We are currently in a powerful process of training medical teams in the use of this innovative method. My goal is for ZAP-X to be the technology of choice for every radiosurgeon and for us to be able to treat 4 million patients who are currently not being treated with radiosurgery and could improve their prognosis and outcome”.
During the meeting, Dr. Sallabanda and Dr. Adler shared the success story of a patient with brain cancer and metastases who had undergone numerous operations during his more than 10 years of unsuccessful treatment and found the solution in ZAP-X technology. In addition to demonstrating that ZAP-X saves lives, the doctors have confirmed that, when tumours are very aggressive and the prognosis is not good, ZAP-X manages to extend life considerably and, at the same time, reducing the suffering of people with a multitude of treatments to which they are subjected and with numerous unwanted side effects.
Before closing the event, Dr John Adler thanked those present and encouraged the public to support research into the future of cancer treatment, “I am currently continuing my research to make this technology more and more powerful through the better software we are working on,” he said.
The Hospital Viamed Santa Elena is a pioneering centre, and the only one in Spain, to have this innovative technology for oncology patients, offering them the complete multidisciplinary team of the centre for the comprehensive management of their pathologies.
The project to implement the ZAP-X technology has been made possible thanks to the Institute of Advanced Radiosurgery (IRCA), based at the Hospital Viamed Santa Elena in Madrid, in collaboration with Mercurius Health, a leading company in advanced oncological solutions.
