CAROL CLARK COMMUNICATIONS Dr. Bobby Baker, director of the Cancer Institute of Maui, helped cancer patient Rosaline Moiha with her treatment. Moiha is the first patient to benefit from a new frameless sterotactic system, which treats tumors previously considered inoperable.

Maui cancer victim
gets new treatment

The woman is the first one treated
using this system of radiation

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By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com

Rosaline Moiha, 68, of Hana soon will be dancing hula again with her family because of a new radiation treatment procedure at the Cancer Institute of Maui.

The intense pain and headaches she suffered as a result of a slow-growing tumor near her right eye have vanished, she said in a telephone interview.

"It's like pounding in your head," she said. "I don't have that anymore. I feel good -- no headache at all."

The tumor, which may eventually have caused blindness, couldn't be removed surgically because of Moiha's diabetes and other medical problems, said Dr. Tom Rogers, Maui Memorial Medical Center neurosurgeon.

So she became the first patient for a Frameless Sterotactic System, called Preference, at the hospital's Cancer Institute. The first of its kind in the state, it allows physicians to treat tumors previously considered inoperable, said Dr. Bobby Baker, institute director.

With the frameless system, he said, physicians can deliver accurate, high concentrations of radiation to inaccessible areas, such as brain tumors.

He said the system won't replace the Gamma Knife, another radiosurgical device that he uses at St. Francis Medical Center to treat brain tumors without cutting.

But the frameless system will be more convenient for Maui patients and will allow radiosurgery on any part of the body, not just the brain, Baker said.

"The biggest exciting thing is it opens up the doors to us for treating areas such as liver tumors, tumors around the spine and even prostate cancer with radiosurgery," he said.

He believes the system will attract patients to Maui from other islands because a patient's head doesn't have to be placed in a frame or halo as with Gamma Knife.

"With the frameless system, there is no position a patient can be placed in that cannot be treated," Baker said.

A virtual head frame is created with tiny gold markers, about one-third the size of a BB pellet, to create a permanent three-dimensional alignment system, he said.

In Moiha's first round of treatment, Baker was assisted by Andrew Jones of Northwest Medical Physics Equipment, manufacturer of the system, and Tom Sullivan, medical physicist at the institute.

Moiha said she was in the hospital off and on with pain and headaches for several weeks until the tumor was diagnosed. When the doctors suggested the frameless treatment, she told them: "You've got to sit down and talk story before you do anything."

"That's what they did," she said. "Dr. Baker and all the doctors were so gentle and nice."

Cases don't have to be done in one day since no frame is involved, Baker said, and Moiha's treatments were spread over five days, ending June 12.

They varied from 30 minutes to nearly two hours, Moiha said.

"You cannot move. You've got to stay still," she said. "To me, it looked like an X-ray machine right over me. They put a mask on my face because the light was too strong ... and put music on."

She said Kenneth, one of her five children, told them not to play Hawaiian music because she dances hula.

"My mom's gonna shake if you do Hawaiian music," he said.

So they played jazz and told her "to take a good dream, and I just went to sleep like nothing happened," she said. Two days later, when the tormenting pain was gone from her head, she said, "They (doctors) all looked at each other. They know they did a good job."

Until she's stronger, she can't return to Noenoe Maiden Ohana, a group of 16 family members who perform hula at Hotel Hana Maui.

But she has resumed other normal activities. "Before, I couldn't get up and do anything," she said. "Now, I can clean house, do everything, and bake. I can take a shower myself."