Ribbon-cutting ceremony at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center Villa Maria

The new Advanced Radiotherapy Center UPMC Hillman Cancer Center at Villa Maria (Mirabella Eclano, province of Avellino) will be inaugurated on October 8, 2018. The Center offers cancer patients various innovative radiation treatments, including stereotactic radiosurgery, and is equipped with one of the most advanced linear accelerator available on the market today –TrueBeam® STx – able to deliver high doses of radiation in a more rapid and precise way, reducing the length of treatment and considerably minimizing the onset of side effects.

The Center is part of the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center network: more than 60 locations in the U.S. and Europe ensuring the highest standard of care to over 110,000 patients each year.
The entire team shares daily experiences and clinical cases with their colleagues in Europe and the United States.

“We are confident that this Center will provide extremely important services to our community,” said Dr. Domenico Covotta, President of Villa Maria, “and with this in mind we selected the best possible partners to offer high-quality advanced radiotherapy to our patients”.

“The Varian TrueBeam STx available at our Center is a fully-integrated, high precision, and high-speed system allowing for precise localization and treatment of tumors in all areas of the body,” said Dr. Piercarlo Gentile, Medical Director of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center Villa Maria. “This method guarantees several benefits including considerably shorter treatment times and a more comfortable experience for patients.”

In order to maximize the efficiency of the services provided to its patients, in addition to recruiting 15 full-time professionals (including radiation oncologists, medical physicists, radiation therapists, nursing and administrative staff), having a positive economic and social impact on the territory, the Center will be equipped with a state-of-the-art ICT infrastructure, and will be included in a telemedicine program that will enable daily exchanges with professionals in other UPMC centers in Pittsburgh and in Italy.

“UPMC has been operating in Italy for over 20 years. In Sicily, thanks to a partnership with the regional government we established and currently manage ISMETT, an advanced center for transplants and high-specialty therapies,” said Dr. Bruno Gridelli, Executive Vice President UPMC International. “Based on the success of ISMETT, the Italian government has created the Ri.MED Foundation that next year will start construction work on the Biomedical Research and Biotechnology Center (BRBC), a facility due to staff over 600 researchers. At San Pietro Hospital in Rome, in 2013 we installed and operated the first TrueBeam available in Italy south of Milan, and thousands of patients have been treated, also thanks to the support of specialists from UPMC and Pittsburgh. The opening of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center Villa Maria is a further step in UPMC’s mission: provide outstanding patient care in places where such care is still not available. The Center in Mirabella Eclano will be able to rely on the knowledge and full support of UPMC San Pietro FBF and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh.”