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Our board-certified oncologists serve patients throughout East Texas, Houston, and surrounding areas, from The Woodlands to Lake Jackson. No matter where you live or which location you choose, you can trust that we will provide the same patient-centered care to everyone.
As home to the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, St. Luke’s Health provides advanced resources backed by our clinical and research partnerships. Our multidisciplinary team is bringing innovative treatments from lab to bedside faster than ever to help stop cancer in its tracks.
Our specialized teams develop custom treatment plans for every patient. These plans often include more than one type of therapy. Learn more about each treatment option and the side effects of each.
Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to prevent the growth of cancer cells by shrinking or killing them. The multidisciplinary team at St. Luke's Health personalizes the delivery of these drugs for each patient’s type and stage of cancer. Regardless of how it is delivered, chemotherapy is considered a systemic treatment because the medication transfers through the bloodstream to the entire body.
Side effects from chemotherapy are different for each patient. Talk to your physician about what to expect and how you can cope with these side effects. Our compassionate team is committed to providing expansive resources for our cancer patients, including support groups and spiritual care.
Radiation therapy uses ionizing radiation to injure or destroy targeted cells, usually cancer cells, while preserving as many normal surrounding cells as possible. Radiation therapy may be used to reduce the size of a cancer before surgery, to destroy any remaining cancer cells after surgery, or, in some cases, as the main treatment. It can also be used in conjunction with chemotherapy. Dependent on your type of cancer and other factors, your physician may choose to use either external beam radiation therapy or internal radiation therapy.
External beam radiation therapy is the most frequently used type of radiation for cancer patients. During this process, a radiation oncologist will use a machine to aim high-energy beams of radiation from outside the body toward the tumor.
Internal radiation therapy, also called brachytherapy, uses a radiation source that’s usually sealed in a small implant. This implant is placed into the body near or inside the tumor, targeting the therapy to harm as few healthy cells as possible.
Gamma Knife is a technique that uses targeted radiation to treat brain tumors and other neurological conditions. This procedure does not involve any incisions. Rather, surgeons direct highly targeted beams of radiation to areas of the brain that require treatment, eliminating the risk of damaging surrounding healthy tissue.
During Gamma Knife brain surgery, 192 individual beams of radiation are positioned, so they converge on a single focus point. Your surgical team optimizes the shape and dose of radiation to treat the areas that require treatment without exposing surrounding areas to excess radiation.
Most patients experience no discomfort from Gamma Knife radiosurgery and return home the same day. Because radiation treatments work over time, patients can see the effects of this procedure over a period of weeks or months.
A non-invasive alternative to surgery for cancerous and non-cancerous tumors, CyberKnife® tracks, detects, and corrects for motion to administer precise radiation dose therapy. The non-surgical treatment requires no anesthesia and is painless. It’s so precise that radiation can be sculpted to small complexly shaped lesions near critical structures, including arteriovenous malformations, acoustic neuroma, trigeminal neuralgia, and ocular melanoma. CyberKnife® is used to treat many tumors and lesions that may have been previously considered inoperable or untreatable, including tumors in the prostate, lung, brain, spine, liver, pancreas, and kidney.
What are the benefits of CyberKnife® radiation therapy?
The CyberKnife® uses image-guided robotics to precisely target and destroy tumors and other lesions with multiple beams of radiation. Each individual beam is not sufficient to cause harm, but the cumulative effect of all the beams at the target results in the lesion receiving a very high dose of radiation with extreme accuracy – protecting and retaining the healthy tissue surrounding it.
The CyberKnife® combines two leading technologies that allow for optimal treatment:
As the home of the Baylor College of Medicine's Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, St. Luke’s Health is partnered with the largest clinical genetics program in the nation. This gives us the opportunity to analyze the genetic makeup of patients to identify the potential for cancer, take measures to prevent its onset, and develop custom treatments for each case. Our strong academic and research programs allow us to provide leading-edge cancer treatment to our patients.
This emergent research has led to impressive clinical applications. For example, specific gene changes can be used to predict which patients will have a better or worse outcome from treatment. This provides the oncology team with greater insight when planning the intensity of each patient’s treatment plan. Additionally, doctors can test for gene mutations in cancer cells that could indicate certain medications would be ineffective.
The experts at St. Luke’s Health can provide guidance about gene therapy options specific to each patient. If you have questions about gene therapy or oncology treatments, ask your physician for more information about what’s right for you.
Immunotherapy refers to any therapy that helps the immune system identify cancer cells and strengthen its response to fight them.
Side effects from immunotherapy are different for each patient. Talk to your physician about what to expect and how you can cope with these side effects. Our compassionate team is committed to providing expansive resources for our cancer patients, including support groups and spiritual care.
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Home of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of only three NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in Texas, U.S. News & World Report has accredited Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center as one of the best hospitals for several specialties, including previous accreditation for compassionate patient-centered cancer care.
