Mary Kara Bucci

Varian Halycon Image: varian.com — Varian Halcyon Image: varian.com

Dr. Mary Kara Bucci provides oncology radiation services to patients in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Four times over the course of her career, Dr. Mary Kara Bucci has been included in the rankings of the Best Doctors in America.

Mary Kara Bucci, MD, graduated from the University of Michigan and then completed her postdoctoral training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. A world leader in radiation oncology, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania recently became the first hospital to implement a new form of radiation technology.

The new treatment modality provides a more user-friendly therapy to patients with head or neck cancers. Called the Varian Halcyon System, this technology streamlines many of the tasks involved in radiation treatment. In the system, the number of steps in a typical treatment regime is reduced from 30 to nine.

The University of Pennsylvania teamed with Varian two years ago to create a platform that would be easier for technicians and more accommodating for patients. With the new technology, training for technicians has become more streamlined and intuitive. Further, the system works at twice the speed of other platforms and is more accurate than standard approaches to radiation.

Dr. Mary Kara Bucci serves as a radiation oncologist at the MD Anderson/Presbyterian Health System in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Drawing on more than 13 years of experience, Dr. Mary Kara Bucci applies a detailed knowledge of available radiation treatments for lung cancer.

For patients with lung cancer, radiation may serve as either a primary or secondary treatment. Patients scheduled for surgical excision may undergo radiation therapy before surgery, to reduce the size of the tumor, or after surgery, to kill remaining cancer cells. If a patient is undergoing chemotherapy, radiation may occur concurrently with or subsequent to the chemo treatment.

Radiation therapy may also serve to reduce some of the symptoms of lung cancer. It often proves effective in reducing pain, shortness of breath, and coughing, and it has also proven useful at addressing symptoms of the cancer’s metastasis. This is particularly true of cancers that have spread to the brain, in which case a prophylactic cranial irradiation can help to minimize symptoms inherent in this condition.

For patients with small cell lung cancer, most radiation treatments take the form of external beam radiation therapy, or EBRT, which requires the treatment team to deliver radiation to the tumor from a machine outside the body. Although this does present the possibility of side effects, such as skin and hair changes near the area where the radiation enters the body, recent developments allow for more precise delivery of the radiation beams to the tumor. One popular methodology is three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy, or 3D-CRT, which uses computer mapping to shape and aim radiation beams in order to minimize contact with surrounding tissue.

Mary Kara Bucci

University of Pennsylvania Implements New Radiation Technology

Radiation Therapy for Lung Cancer