Services

At the Middlesex Hospital Cancer Center, the person with cancer is more than a diagnosis and a standard treatment plan. Each person is a member of a family, may be a business person, employee, a son/daughter. She/he may be facing other life crises—aging parents, child care, financial hardship. The Cancer Center strives to treat and support the whole person and family. The patient is an active participant in decisions about treatment. Each person is unique and therefore each treatment plan is also unique. The course of action decided by the patient, in consultation with their physician, may follow one of several different routes.

Surgery

Surgery is often the first diagnostic or treatment option for cancer, and may be used in combination with either radiation therapy or chemotherapy. When needed, our dedicated, board-certified surgeons represent many specialties and work as a team with your primary care physician and oncologist to provide the best diagnostic and treatment options for your type of cancer.

Medical Oncology/Hematology

Many cancer patients are referred to one of our board-certified medical oncologists, doctors specializing in treating cancer. Your oncologist will determine the best treatment options and discuss these with you and your family. The medical oncologist will often your overall treatment plan including radiation oncology, chemotherapy and further surgery as well as assist with second-opinions if requested. The medical oncologist can also recommend other services, such as physical therapy, nutritional support, psychsocial or psychological counseling. For the person with advanced disease, our oncologists can provide referrals for homecare, palliative care or hospice care.

The type of treatment you are given for your cancer depends on many things, particularly the type of disease you have, where in the body it started (the primary site), what the cancer cells look like under the microscope and how far they have spread (metastasis), if at all.

Chemotherapy

Medical oncologists may prescribe the use of anti-cancer drugs to destroy cancer cells, called chemotherapy. There are many different chemotherapy drugs and the number grows almost daily. Some are given alone, but often the treatment plan includes several drugs in combination. These combinations are based on the effectiveness of the drugs against your tumor and an effort to minimize side effects. Chemotherapy may be given at the all-new infusion center at the Cancer Center, at the infusion unit on North 5 at the main hospital or in your doctor’s office. Wherever you receive your chemotherapy in the Middlesex Health System, our goal is safe, effective drug administration and attention to all aspects of your care. Each of these areas has been designed to provide patients with the greatest comfort possible during their treatments. Nurses in our Cancer Center are certified by the Oncology Nursing Society.

Radiation Oncology

If radiation therapy is prescribed as part of your treatment plan, you will be referred to a doctor who specializes in radiation therapy, a radiation oncologist. During your therapy, you may benefit from Middlesex Hospital Cancer Center’s state-of-the-art Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) linear accelerator. Unlike older devices, the exceptional precision of the IMRT enables it to deliver higher doses of radiation to your tumor, while sparing the surrounding normal tissue. This makes it particularly effective for difficult-to-treat tumors in the neck, spine or lung.

Radiation oncologists work closely with our radiation physicist and dosimetrist to develop a treatment plan which delivers the prescribed dose to the tumor while protecting nearby healthy tissues and structures. This plan is assured even before treatment begins. The first step is a treatment simulation that sets the patient’s position for treatment, verifies the dose to be given and received in that position. The physicist and radiation oncologist must approve the plan before treatment begins. At this time, you will also meet the radiation therapists who will give your treatment each day. Treatment may be as brief as two weeks or as extended as six weeks.

Our experienced, highly qualified Radiation Oncologists can provide you with more information about your specific course of treatment.