STEPHANIE DOYLE

Photo of Dr. Holasek

As a resident, Dr. Maureen C. Holasek did not know much about radiation oncology.

“In residency, it’s not one of those things you hear about,” she said.
But one day while doing a rotation in diagnostic oncology, she happened to walk across the hall to the radiation oncology department.

She put thoughts of anesthesiology and obstetrics/gynecology aside and the rest is history. Holasek, who in 1991 completed her residency in radiation oncology at the University of Minnesota, today works at the high-tech CyberKnife Center Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford.

Holasek, who has lived in Central Florida since 1992 and recently built a home in Winter Park, has worked at the CyberKnife Center since October.

CyberKnife, which opened in the spring of 2007, gives doctors and patients a life-saving option for treating difficult tumors and lesions. The radiation therapy is designed to treat cancer and other tumors without invasive surgery. The device received approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1999 to treat tumors of the head and neck, followed by approval to treat tumors with CyberKnife anywhere in the body in 2004.

Central Florida Regional Hospital is the first in Central Florida to offer the technology of the CyberKnife® Stereotactic Radiosurgery System. It uses advanced robotics and computer guidance to deliver precise radiation beams to treat tumors — even those previously thought untreatable with other radiosurgery systems.

“I’m kind of their last hope,” Holasek said, explaining the most gratifying aspect of her job.

A computer program evaluates the unique shape and location of the tumor to determine the orientation of each of the 1,200 or more beams of radiation that will target the tumor. Each tumor generally requires one to five treatments, each lasting 45 to 90 minutes.

“Because these beams are so accurate, we’re done in a significantly shorter amount of time,” said Holasek, who completed her medical degree in 1987 at East Tennessee State University in Johnston City, Tenn., and earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Holasek compared it to taking high doses of antibiotics.

“Imagine taking 100 milligrams of antibiotics per day for 10 days – then you’ve consumed 1,000 milligrams of antibiotics,” Holasek said. “If you were to instead take all of those 10 pills in one day in one setting, the biological effectiveness is much higher. It’s giving high doses in a short amount of time, instead of giving a bunch of little treatments.”

CyberKnife is so precise and accurate that radiation beams can treat small, complex tumors near critical structures such as hearing and vision nerves. Central Florida Regional Hospital uses CyberKnife to treat a variety of cancer and other tumors including those in the head, neck and spine, as well as tumors of the lung, prostate, pancreas, liver, kidney and pelvis.

It’s a far cry from the late 1980s, said Holasek, who prefers to educate others about her field than talk about herself.

“The equipment has changed a lot,” Holasek said. “We went from having the old-fashioned Cobalt machine to the linear accelerator. The CyberKnife is a linear accelerator but it can do so much more.”

And in the Orlando area, Central Florida Regional Hospital is the only place patients will find it. In fact, there are fewer than 100 CyberKnife machines in the entire country, in part because it carries a $5 million price tag, which includes training and construction costs.

“It’s an expensive venture,” Holasek said.

While most patients are somewhat scared of standard radiation, not so with CyberKnife, she said.

“Most of them already have gotten on the Internet ahead of time and usually are well-versed and know what it can do,” she said. “They say, ‘I’ve read about it, I want it, it’s for me.’ It does have a wow effect.”

The catch is, it’s not applicable for everybody, she said. For example, a man called recently, hoping his wife might be a candidate. She had stage 4 lung cancer.

“We can’t zap each and every spot,’’ Holasek said. “The correct thing for her is to go on chemotherapy and then see if there is anything residual. It’s not meant for every tumor.”

But one of the greatest misperceptions of radiation oncology is more general, Holasek said.

“A lot of people confuse it with chemotherapy, and think it will make them vomit,’’ she said. “But as long as you keep the radiation beam away from the stomach and mouth they generally do well.”

Holasek knows the ins and outs of her specialty, and her nurse, Chrissie Kotwica, concurred. “She is one of the smartest physicians I have ever worked around,” Kotwica said. “She is intelligent, creative, has wonderful bedside manner with her patients, and she is wonderful to work for.”



March 2008