Christine

The CyberKnife (CK)radiation experience was better in every way from my original IMRT but some of that was due to hospital procedures and different chemo. The first and most obvious difference is completing treatment in only one week instead of 35 visits. Although the CK session was scheduled for an hour, it ended up being the same amount of time each day as the 10 minutes of IMRT since there was no backlog of patients, no machine breakdowns, and the fact that they only had to do one patient an hour in CK instead of the IMRT team racing to cram in 4 patients an hour.
Without the Eribitux aggravating the radiation dermatitis, my face was not a peeling open sore sensitive to the mask.
The CK machine itself looks more like a futuristic medical robot doctor than the IMRT machine and the lasers used to refocus the beams add to that.
The CK was so pleasant, I actually fell asleep each time, something unthinkable in IMRT. I had heard about how great CK was for treating prostate cancer and I had asked to be treated at the very beginning with CK, but my RO said IMRT was more appropriate for base of tongue cancer. He said CK was to be kept in reserve "just in case".
The only side effect that was the same with both CK and IMRT was the fatigue. No way around that bad boy. The CK actually hit me a little harder since each dose was two and half times higher than my IMRT. I hope with all you have been thru that this remains an academic question for you.
Charm