La Paz will have one of the most innovative soon therapy centers

Prontotherapy allows greater precision in the administration of radiation doses for certain tumors

The Radiation Oncology and Radiophysics Services will act as a single team

The City of Health of the Community of Madrid, which was presented this Tuesday, will house the new facilities of the La Paz University Public Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine of the Autonomous University of Madrid, in addition to other spaces for research. With an investment of 1,000 million euros to create the biosanitary Campus further modern and innovative from Europewill have one of the most modern soon therapy centers in the world and pediatric patient care.

An innovative Comprehensive Pediatric Cancer Center will be launched in the City of Health with the aim of changing the procedure in the diagnosis and therapy of this disease in children and adolescents, as well as its subsequent follow-up.

Each patient will have a personalized treatment and the healthcare and research teams will be the great value of the center, which will attract experience and talent from around the world. It will focus on the research and application of advanced therapies and will be equipped with cutting-edge technology.

La Paz is the ideal place to house a Proton Therapy Unit that, with more than 2,700 meters builtwill serve both children as well as adultsallowing greater precision in the delivery of radiation doses for certain tumorsthus minimizing damage to surrounding tissues.

The Radiation Oncology and Radiophysics Services will act as a single team. With highly qualified professionals in the care of pediatric patients, the Proton Therapy Unit will allow the treatment of 50% of the oncology population in Madrid and surrounding areas that do not have this type of facilities.

Proton therapy equipment

radiotherapy with protons is a advanced modality of cancer treatment which allows a more localized release of the radiation dose, reducing the adverse effects on healthy organs close to the tumor and also the probability of developing second tumors. It is especially indicated in cases in which the use of photons would imply excessive risks for patients: pediatric tumors, of the base of the skull, eyes and spinal cord.

This technique represents a new milestone whose Radiation Oncology, Radiophysics and Medical Oncology services have been pioneers in the application of the most innovative techniques for the treatment of cancer, as well as in the humanization of patient treatment.

Units in La Paz

In the case of the La Paz Hospital, the Proton Therapy Unit financed by the Amancio Ortega Foundation, will begin construction in the first phase of the comprehensive renovation works of this health center in the capital, a national and international reference.

In fact, it is the Spanish hospital with the largest number of centers, services and reference units (CSUR) designated by Health for the care of complex diseases and pathologies, specifically 27five of them in the field of pediatric oncology.

This technology will be added to the existing equipment in this Madrid public center, which will make La Paz the first Spanish hospital to have all the radiotherapy technologies available in the fight against cancer.

In this way, the Radiation Oncology Service, as well as the Radiophysics and Radioprotection Service, will have the latest techniques to attend to any type of process with an indication for this type of treatment. The high qualification of the professionals of the Hospital La Paz in the management of these patients and their experience acquired in the application of complex irradiation techniques will allow their immediate translation to proton therapy.

Pioneering childhood cancer center

La Paz is a national reference center for diagnosis and treatment all childhood neoplasms, including hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). In addition, it is one of the four hospitals that carries out activity in cellular immunotherapy in Hemato-Oncology pediatrics at the national level.

Since 2011, it has been listed as a Reference Center (CSUR) of the National Health System (SNS) for allogeneic pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, also as a CSUR for retinoblastoma and childhood sarcomas. Since March 2019, it has also been an additional center for the administration of CAR-T therapies and Qualified European Center for the administration of commercial CAR-T therapies available to date by the European Medicines Agency and the marketing owner of each medicine.

Approximately 120-150 new cases of childhood cancer are diagnosed at these facilities every year. Children with cancer are treated not only from the Community of Madrid, but it is also the Reference Hospital for children with hemato-oncological from other Autonomous Communities (Castilla León, Castilla La Mancha, La Rioja or Extremadura).

The main axis of the care process is led by pediatric oncologists. This aspect has a very positive impact on our patients, since we are specialists in the management of pediatric oncology patients, whose characteristics and complexities make them very different from that of an adult.

The Children’s Pain Unit of the La Paz University Hospital comprehensively attends to and monitors some 1,500 pediatric patients each year. Of them, 100 suffer from chronic pain, 400 suffer from acute pain and up to a total of a thousand patients suffer from procedural pain, a problem that the project specifically addresses. Bedside anesthesia in children with cancer that seeks to provide a solution.

In Spain, according to data from the Spanish Federation of Parents with Children with Cancer, 1,500 children receive a cancer diagnosis each year, although five-year survival in children from 0 to 14 years old can reach up to 80%. According to the Tumor registry of the Community of Madrid, RTMAD, in 2019, nearly 300 cases of cancer were registered in children and adolescents. La Paz registered a third of the total cases in the region.