CMS Announces First Clinical FOCUS IMRT Use With Siemens PRIMUS.

Business Editors, Health & Medical Writers

ST. LOUIS--(BW HealthWire)--Oct. 29, 2001

Computerized Medical Systems, Inc. (CMS) and The Radiation Oncology Center at Saint Margaret Mercy Healthcare Centers in Hammond, IN announce that, to date, three patients have been successfully planned with CMS' FOCUS(R) IMRT (Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy) inverse planning software and treated using the Siemens PRIMUS(TM) linear accelerator.

The patient treatments were the first clinical FOCUS IMRT plans developed for the Siemens PRIMUS. Two treatments involved boosts for the prostate and the third was a concomitant treatment in the head and neck involving three different targets. Five beams were used in each case with segmentation delivery options chosen from FOCUS' algorithm and the ImFAST(TM) MLC segmentation software from Siemens. St. Margaret's will be starting evaluation of the recently received FOCUS Version 3.1 that has an embedded version of ImFAST.

Dose accuracy has been consistent at +/- 2.5% according to Dr. Renate Muller-Runkel the Medical Physicist for the Center. ""As the physicist, I am most appreciative of the QA tools embedded in FOCUS. The software allows me to compare the calculated doses in a patient's treatment plan to measurements made in a phantom. The good agreement I obtained gave me the confidence I needed to proceed."

Dr. Urmi Kalokhe, Medical Director of the Oncology Center at St. Margaret Mercy acknowledged that for the Head and Neck treatment ".... the spinal cord can tolerate radiation doses far less than the dose required to control soft tissue sarcoma and therefore IMRT was most helpful. Considering the amount of radiation received to the tumor, the patient had no side effects. Without the availability of IMRT we would not have been able to deliver the dose of radiation required to control this aggressive form of cancer."

Doug Sprague, CMS President and CEO said "The period between first training on the FOCUS IMRT software and first clinical patient was only about a month. Dr. Muller-Runkel, her colleagues and CMS customer support worked extremely hard to put all the pieces into place and I applaud St. Margaret's dedication to becoming the first clinical site for FOCUS IMRT with the Siemens PRIMUS."

Saint Margaret Mercy Healthcare is a nationally recognized provider of heart care, orthopedics, oncology, inpatient rehabilitation, home care and pediatric services. It is the largest acute-care hospital in Northwest Indiana with two campuses, located in Hammond and Dyer, Indiana. For more information about Saint Margaret Mercy's Health Centers of Excellence, call 888/784-2100 or visit the hospital's Web site at www.smmhc.com.

Computerized Medical Systems, Inc. manufactures, markets and supports FOCUS 3-D Treatment Planning Systems including FOCUS IMRT, Focal PC-based applications including FocalEase(TM), a physician's desktop contouring package, FocalFusion(TM), a multimodality automated image fusion/registration tool, and FocalVue(TM), a desktop physician's review workstation application, as well as DynaScan, a Dosimetry system for beam data collection. Offices are located worldwide with headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri and regional offices in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and a new European regional office in Frieburg, Germany. CMS is the worldwide market share leader in radiation treatment planning systems with over 1,000 FOCUS 3-D systems installed to date; more 3-D RTP installations than any competitor. Sales of FOCUS IMRT is approaching 150 units. For further information on CMS, please visit the CMS Website at http://www.cms-stl.com or call CMS at 800/878-4267 or 314/993-0003.