New prostate cancer treatment comes to Valley. (Cancer Awareness).

Bill Battersby recently celebrated his 67th birthday and says he feels no different than he did 20 years ago. Despite his fight with prostate cancer, Battersby remains active, continues to work full-time, and is optimistic about his future. He recently completed 40 treatments of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank and is the first patient to receive IMRT treatments at the hospital.

If you ask Battersby about his experience, he'll tell you, "It was as simple as laying on a tanning bed in a tanning salon."

Battersby was first diagnosed with prostate cancer last July. He decided to research the best radiation oncologists in the nation. His search led to Christopher Rose, M.D, at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center. Dr. Rose felt Battersby was a candidate for IMRT, which allows for higher, more precise doses of radiation while leaving the surrounding tissues and cells relatively unharmed.

IMRT is one of the most advanced forms of external beam radiation therapy available to cancer patients today. Rather than having a single large radiation beam pass through the body, IMRT breaks the radiation up into thousands of tiny pencil-thin beams while the equipment is rotated around the patient. With millimeter accuracy, these beams enter the body and intersect on the cancer. The result is a high dosage to the tumor and a lower dose to surrounding healthy tissues.

Currently, Providence Saint Joseph is the only medical center in the entire San Fernando Valley to offer IMRT to patients. Only a handful of hospitals and clinics in the Los Angeles area offer this revolutionary technology and only about 15 percent of hospitals nationwide have this new aggressive treatment for cancer.

IMRT uses computer-generated images to plan and deliver tightly focused radiation beams to cancerous tumors. A powerful computer program develops a treatment plan based on a physician's dose instructions.

"Once we can get to the point where we strike the tumor and nothing else, then we'll no longer be limited in the radiation dose," said Dr. Rose.

For Dr. Rose, the use of IMRT at Providence Saint Joseph was the culmination of 30 years of research. He was present for the birth of the idea at the Harvard Joint Center for Radiation Therapy where he was trained and taught.

"When my partner, Dr. Les Botnick, and I left Harvard to start a radiation oncology center here at Providence Saint Joseph, we wanted to deliver care equivalent to the best academic centers," said Dr. Rose, "Burbank was not Harvard, but we wanted our patients to get a Harvard quality of care." Dr. Rose is also helping to launch the technology at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills.

IMRT is one of four new technologies -- which the Providence Saint Joseph Radiation Oncology Department has introduced in the past few months -- that attack cancer harder and more precisely. The department also continues to participate in nationwide clinical trials, allowing individuals to receive treatment that would not otherwise be available to them.

According to Dr. Rose, Bill Battersby's prognosis is good, and the doctor is pleased with the way Battersby responded.

"From an emotional standpoint, to watch your patient literally fly through the treatment with no problems at all is very gratifying," Dr. Rose said.

Battersby is equally pleased with his treatment. He experienced no adverse side effects and calls Dr. Rose one of his three "life heroes." Said Battersby, "There might be a doctor in the world as good as Dr. Rose, but there's absolutely nobody better."

This article was provided by Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.