Patient Success Stories

Innovative Radiation Therapy Provides Hope for Cancer Patient

In his role as manager of an elegant French restaurant in his adopted home of Annapolis, MD, Paris native Gerard Balageas presents a calm, understated demeanor that puts guests at ease. His personal life for the past three years, however, has been anything but serene, as he struggled with a life-threatening disease. Innovative treatment for his cancer at the University of Maryland Medical Center's Greenebaum Cancer Center (UMGCC), however, has provided hope for the future for Balageas, his American wife and their two young daughters.

As far back as 1996, the 55-year-old Balageas remembers having pain in his right temple. He was diagnosed with temporo-mandibular joint (TMJ) pain and given medication, but the pain never really went away.

In the spring of 2000, he noticed a small lump developing on his face at the site of the pain. He went to see his doctor, who diagnosed an infection and prescribed a course of antibiotics. Instead of resolving, the condition worsened; the lump grew larger and the pain persisted. Doctors suspected an infection had recurred, and performed surgery to partially remove his parotid gland.

That wasn't to be the end of the problem. Over that summer, the lump grew rapidly -- eventually becoming baseball-sized and encroaching on his right eye. A CT scan performed in October revealed what Balageas had suspected -- that he had a tumor. His doctor told him that it was malignant and that there was nothing he could do for him.

Balageas remembers the following months as a blur of visits to specialists. One after another, doctors told him that the location and type of his tumor -- growing into his blood vessels and very close to his eye -- made surgery impossible and radiation extremely risky.

Desperate for some improvement in his condition, he decided to take his chances and underwent three months of conventional radiation designed to shrink the tumor. With the tumor somewhat smaller and his vision unimpaired, he began chemotherapy in early 2001. For a while, his condition seemed to be stabilized, if not resolved.

Following a family trip back to France in March, 2003, Balageas had a check up and CT scan. The results were disheartening: his tumor had recurred. Doctors immediately started him on another round of chemotherapy.

In the midst of this period of uncertainty and discomfort, Balageas was at home one evening reading Time magazine when he happened upon an ad for a new technology called Gamma Knife surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center's Greenebaum Cancer Center (UMGCC). He called for an appointment the next day.

Armed with all of his films and records from two years of treatment, Balageas went to see Dr. Lawrence Chin, associate professor of neurosurgery in the University of Maryand School of Medicine and medical director of the University of Maryland Gamma Knife Center at the UMGCC.

Dr. Chin explained that Balageas was not a candidate for Gamma Knife surgery, which is used primarily to treat tumors of the brain. However, he said he had a colleague whom he believed could help. He referred Balageas to Dr. William Regine, a nationally-known expert in radiation oncology and professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and chief of radiation oncology at the UMGCC.

Dr. Regine welcomed the challenge of Balageas' difficult-to-treat case. He explained an innovative therapy called Spatially Fractionated Radiation, also known as GRID therapy, which uses multiple pencil-like beams of radiation simultaneously to deliver five to ten times the normal dose of radiation to attack and destroy the core of the tumor. GRID is generally used to treat larger tumors felt to be relatively resistant to conventional radiation or is used when conventional radiation therapy fails. UMGCC is one of just a few medical centers in the country using GRID therapy.

"When I met with Dr. Regine and told him what I had been through, he said, 'Trust me, I know what I'm doing.' He reassured me that I was a good candidate for this new therapy," said Belageas. The process involved fitting him with a special mask with dozens of holes in it, through which the pencil-sized beams of radiation would be directed. He underwent the GRID radiation treatment followed by 18 days of twice daily Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). "I figure I had 2,786 shots of radiation in all during the treatments," he recalls.

The cutting-edge therapy appears to have been a success for his unusual case. It's been a year since he completed the GRID therapy at UMGCC. He returns to see Dr. Regine and his team every four months, and received a good report on his most recent check up. He credits Dr. Regine for providing hope when others had given up. "It's always possible that I'll have a recurrence, but so far so good. I feel fine," says Balageas, who's busy these days happily working, enjoying life in Annapolis and watching his daughters grow.


This page was last updated on: January 25, 2007.