Behind a heavy metal door on the fourth floor of the New York-Presbyterian David H. Koch Center is a new weapon in the fight against cancer.
A magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine allows doctors to do something called MRI-guided radiation therapy.
Dr. Himanshu Nagar, a radiation oncologist at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said the machine allows him to more accurately hit a tumor with radiation.
"Our goal is to cure cancer," he said. "Lung tumors move when you breathe, when you burp, when you have a hiccup."
The machine's technology detects the tumor moving and responds by automatically ending the radiation dose until the tumor moves back into the target zone.
What may seem like a minor innovation has major benefits. MRI-guided radiation therapy can protect healthy tissues from radiation exposure.
In 2017, doctors told Ellen Wright she had a malignant tumor on her lung.
"I couldn't believe it," Wright said. I kept thinking, 'This was a mistake or this was happening to somebody else."
She had five days of MRI-guided radiation therapy to shrink the tumor.
"This treatment allows us to keep the radiation volume as small as possible so that optimizes their side effects," Dr. Nicholas Sanfilippo, Ellen's radiation oncologist, told Fox 5.
Doctors have told Ellen and her husband of more than 40 years that her prognosis is excellent. She said she feels great.
Weill Cornell is the only hospital in the Northeast using the MRI-guided radiation therapy machine. Doctors have been using it for about six months and are eager to see the long-term results.
"We're expecting patients to be cured of their cancer, live longer," Nagar said. "And then give them a therapeutic benefit of not having a side effect from their cancer treatment."
—SHARON CROWLEY
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