by the advertising of radiation oncology centers (or other medical specialties)
In the LA Times today there is an ad for Tomotherapy offered at City of Hope. The ad promises a couple of things worth pointing out.
The ad states there are no incisions with Tomotherapy. This is correct-but there are no incisions with any other type of external beam radiation therapy either. The ad is technically correct but is very misleading by suggesting Tomo is better for this reason. This is folly.
The ad also mentions correcting the radiation position by using 3D imaging and implies it is the only and the best way to do this. This is blatently incorrect. There are other machines that use imaging to correct alignment. Tomotherapy has never been proven to be superior to these other machines. The ad is just not telling the truth.
The ad says that side effects will be reduced. Reduced compared to what? There have been no comparisons between Tomotherapy and IGRT (Trilogy), Elektas machines, or others to suggest Tomo is better. And side effects are lowered with all these machines compared to traditional external beam techniques. This is just an attempt to use misleading statements to convince patients that City of Hope is better and Tomotherapy is superior. Neither are.
City of Hope is tooting the horn of Tomotherapy in the wrong way and it is unfair to desperate patients looking for answers.
These ads are misleading and an example of taking advantage of the publics trust. The ads intention is to gather business and it is a shame that City of Hope allows these ads without proper review to make sure they are completely truthful or not misleading in any way.
I have seen many patients who believe such advertising. They want so badly to believe the hype and will drive an extra 90 minutes each day for 8 weeks to go to City of Hope or other places that use ads in this way --and they will not get any better treatment than if they stayed near their own home.
To be fair there are some instances where tomotherapy, or IMRT, or IGRT, or proton therapy will be very useful. But this should be decided by your radiation oncologist and surgeon--not by some misleading advertisement in the LA Times.
City of Hope is an exellent institution and deserves its wonderful reputation. But I think they should carefully review ads promoting themselves to make sure they are not misleading in any way.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Phil,
You seem pretty pissed off at either City of Hope or tomotherapy... I'm curious if you had a bad experience with one of them or something. Also, you say that there are untruths in the advertisement and claim that tomotherapy is no better than any other kind of radiation treatment (particularly Varian's Trilogy), but you don't seem to offer any details about either technology. For instance, you're saying that Trilogy offers imaging guidance just like Tomotherapy. Although the trilogy does have a type of image guidance, it does not generate a CT scan. Trilogy uses two orthogonal X-ray's to create a "3D" image of the patient where tomotherapy actually has an onboard CT scanner that rotates around the patient just like a diagnostic CT. It seems to me that you might be doing something similar to what you're accusing City of Hope of doing -- not telling the whole story. Trilogy's technology is adequate for most type of cancer treatment and is certainly better than no image guidance, however for some types of cancer, this isn't enough and only tomotherapy's solution will do it.
Thank you for your comment. I really appreciate the time you took to write. I took your suggestions seriously and made corrections to the post.
I've never had a bad experience with City of Hope or Tomotherapy. I believe both are excellent in what they do for cancer patients. And I refer patients there and will continue to do so.
I'm only commenting on the ad and it really seems to me that it could and should be written in a way that is not misleading in any way. There should not be a hint of untruthfullness in ads while institutions toot their horn. And I am for institutions tooting their horns. I think it is important for the public to know how good some places are and what new technology is available. But there is a better way to accomplisth this goal
Finally, I did not say that Trilogy has the same image guidance system as tomotherapy--only that one system has not been compared to another to make the kinds of statements that are made in the ad. I only mention Trilogy in the next paragraph regarding side effects.
Again, thank you very much for your insighful comments.
Post a Comment