Kotak Mahindra Prime Ltd. has partnered with Tata Memorial Center to provide advanced medical technology to a cancer treatment center in Navi Mumbai. As part of this collaboration, the first SDX Voluntary Breath Hold System will be implemented at the Proton Therapy Center located in the Advanced Center for Treatment, Research, and Education in Cancer located in Kharghar.

The new system is meant to improve the accuracy of proton therapy, a very complex form of radiation therapy. While receiving a dose of radiation from a proton beam, patients must hold their breath for the duration of treatment. This is incredibly important when treating tumors located near to the chest or abdomen, such as those affecting the lungs, liver, pancreas and breast.

If motion management is not performed to control tumor movement while breathing, there is a high probability that radiation will not be delivered to the desired area due to the amount of distance that a tumor will shift from its original position. For example, a liver tumor may shift as much as three centimeters during the breathing cycle. The breath-hold system allows clinicians to only target the tumor with radiation and results in fewer healthy organs being irradiated as well as improved treatment results for patients.

With the upgrade, the centre is now able to provide proton-based SBRT. SBRT allows for the rapid delivery of very high and accurately targeted radiation treatments over a limited number of treatment cycles, which has been shown to increase survival rates for appropriately selected patients and reduce possible side effects.

This project is funded through the Kotak Mahindra Prime's "Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)" programme of providing Healthcare Support, and is part of the company's programme of supporting the improvement of access to quality medical care through infrastructure building and technology upgrades.

ACTREC serves more than 35,000 patients per year, the vast majority being from the Economically Disadvantaged population. Being a Government Funded facility, ACTREC is a significant source of cutting-edge oncology services to a large patient base.

ACTREC's Proton Therapy Centre is currently the only Proton Therapy Centre in India that is Government Funded. The addition of this breath-hold system is seen as a very important measure to ensure that the most advanced cancer treatment options can be provided to those who need them.

The installation of this breath-hold system is an important technical upgrade to ensure the accurate and safe delivery of treatment to those with moving tumors. This technology has reportedly been specifically developed for, and is the only one compatible with, ACTREC's particular configuration of its Proton Therapy System.

On Wednesday, senior officials from both organizations conducted the inauguration of the Kharghar campus; signifying an ongoing trend of continued support from the private sector towards developing public health infrastructure within India, specifically regarding cancer treatment and care.