Stefano De Asarta is passionate about Roman history. At 76, he published his first book.
But three years ago, the Italian scholar and his wife thought his writing career was over when he was diagnosed with ocular melanoma.
"He was very depressed and, uh, with no hope," said his wife, Laure De Asarta.
The biopsy to diagnose his cancer caused a hemorrhage in his eye, blinding him.
Because of where the cancer was located, he was told his eye would have to be removed.
"Which I didn’t like," Stefano said.
But Dr. Steve Carpenter, of Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston, was able to devise a new way to save Stefano's sight, using a method he's successfully used on other types of cancers, called cyberknife.
"It was the only way we could save the eye for this patient," Carpenter said.
The image-guided robot doesn't cut anything. Instead, it uses high doses of radiation to precisely target tumors without harming healthy tissue.
"It can provide what we call ablated radiation that can destroy tumors similar to surgical removal," Carpenter said.
Stefano's tumor was treated in a single day and continues to shirnk.
"Suddenly, everything went away in a half-hour of treatment in this magic room, which is the cyberknife," said Stefano, now 83.
With his vision restored, he focused on finishing his fourth book.
"It gave him back his life," Laure said. "It gave him back his life. Really.”
Since cyberknife is noninvasive, general anesthesia is not needed. Most treatments take no longer than an hour and patients are able to drive themselves home with zero recovery time.
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