Improving cancer patient outcomes: Introducing the XEOS AURA 10 to surgical oncology
13th August 2024
At a glance
> The first XEOS AURA 10 in the UK has been delivered to University Hospital Coventry to support the treatment of prostate cancer.
> The unit will allow surgeons to assess excised specimens in real-time using PET-CT imaging directly in theatre.
> In our latest video, we hear from Consultant Urologist Donald McDonald and Head of Cancer Services John Elliott about this exciting project.
Bringing high-resolution molecular imaging directly to theatres
University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire (UHCW) is the first NHS Trust to pilot the XEOS AURA 10, a mobile unit that brings high-resolution molecular imaging directly to theatres for the first time. Designed to reduce resurgeries and salvage radiotherapies, it will allow surgeons in Coventry to assess excised specimens in real-time using PET-CT during surgery to improve patient outcomes.
The XEOS AURA 10 is already being used successfully in hospitals in Belgium and Germany, and this is the first time this radical new technology is being implemented in the UK. One of the surgeons who will be using it is Consultant Urologist Donald MacDonald. In a recent interview with us, Mr. MacDonald laid out what he hopes the XEOS AURA 10 will bring to his patients.
University Hospital Coventry’s Nuclear Medicine Department take delivery of the XEOS AURA 10, the first of its kind in the UK.
Taking the guesswork out of tissue removal
As Mr. MacDonald identifies, the critical issue with prostate cancer is removing all the cancerous tissue without removing non-cancerous tissue, saying, “There’s about 25% of patients in whom we don’t take enough tissue away, and about 25% of patients in whom we take too much tissue away. And at the moment, we don’t have any tools that are usable in everyday practice that can help guide how radical our dissection should be.
“So, we are hoping that the XEOS will allow us to perform the very minimum amount of surgery, examine the specimen whilst we’re in theatre, whilst the patient is asleep, see if what we’ve done has been sufficient to cure the cancer. And if it has, that’s brilliant, we can leave all of the adjacent structures intact. Whereas if the XEOS tells us that there is still likely to be residual disease then we can go on and extend the limit of our dissection.”
“… the surgeon is able to have greater confidence …”
Head of Cancer Services John Elliott said, “We recognise that there’s a real ability to improve the surgical margins for tumours being removed, so essentially during procedure, the surgeon is able to have greater confidence with regards to the tumour being removed and the surgical margins, meaning that patients are less likely to require salvage radiotherapy that requires additional and unnecessary stress for the patient and also unnecessary, additional care when it can be achieved through one procedure.”
“… we are genuinely very, very excited about what this can offer.”
Mr. Donaldson said, “It’s genuinely very, very exciting. The most radical prostatectomy surgeons would agree that there are certain centers around the world that offer a gold-standard service. The XEOS, if it performs as promised, would allow me to deliver that level of service which is massively empowering for me, so we are genuinely very, very excited about what this can offer.”
Care Wise Product Manager Lucy Farmer said, “I am so excited to be part of this first acquisition of the AURA 10 in the UK. The entire team at Coventry have been a pleasure to work with and it's great to be part of a group of people excited to drive innovation forward. By allowing the surgeons to make decisions in real time it will hopefully speed up the patient’s journey, and that is a very exciting prospect.”
Find out more
You can learn more about the XEOS AURA 10 by watching our latest video or by clicking the button below to speak to a product specialist directly.