TWIN FALLS -- Dr. Charles Smith has seen some pretty amazing advances in cancer treatment in his 30-plus years as a radiation oncologist.

He's seen the advent of computer programs that help prevent errors and better personalize treatment. He's seen technology go from low radiation to high radiation and deliver it to cancer cells with less damage to surrounding healthy tissue.

Best of all, he's seen more and more people survive the disease. It used to be one out of three people survived cancer. Now it's two out of three, Smith said.

"We've doubled the amount of patients we've cured in the last 30 years," he said.

Magic Valley Regional Medical Center partners with St. Luke's Mountain States Tumor Institute to provide state-of-the-art cancer treatment to people in the Magic Valley and northern Nevada. The MSTI site at Magic Valley Regional is growing. St. Luke's and Magic Valley Regional recently added $2.65 million in improvements, including a 3,266-square-foot expansion that houses a new linear accelerator -- a machine that delivers high-energy X-rays to cancer cells. The room that houses the linear accelerator has extra-thick concrete and steel walls to prevent the high-energy X-rays from escaping. The roof, the thickest part of the room, is six feet thick, said Paul Louton, plant manager at Magic Valley Regional.

The new linear accelerator itself better isolates radiation to the cancer cells while better blocking radiation to healthy cells.

"There are less side effects and less damage to outlying tissues," said MSTI Site Manager Corinne Slagel.

Smith is also a new addition, coming on board at the Magic Valley Regional MSTI site from the Boise site in August. During his more than three decades with MSTI, he helped set up programs in Meridian, Fruitland and Nampa. He and his wife, Barbara, have three grown sons, one a radiation oncologist at the MSTI site in Boise.

Although Ada County has the highest incidence of cancer due to its larger and more diverse population, the busiest MSTI site is right here at Magic Valley Regional, Smith said.

"It takes a lot of work to build a busy site," he said. "That's what I've tried to do here and it's been successful."

Having the latest technology helps.

"In order to build a cancer program, you have to have a good machine," he said.

Smith works closely with MSTI's two medical oncologists and other staff to coordinate radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

There are almost 120 different kinds of cancer, and whether a person receives radiation or chemotherapy or both depends on "the type of the disease and the stage of the disease," he said. The typical course of radiation treatment is once a day, five days a week for six weeks.

It's a team effort, with the patient being the most important member of the team.

"The biggest challenge is making sure the patient is comfortable with treatment and a willing participant in treatment," Smith said. "People are involved in the decision to take the treatment. If they don't have the will to make it through it, they probably won't."

And when it comes to treatment, MSTI physicians and other staff consider not only how a person feels physically, but how he or she is doing emotionally.

"We try to look at the patient as a whole person," Smith said. "Emotional support is just as important as treatment, sometimes even more important."

Smith said cancer treatment gets better all the time.

"There's marked improvements in chemotherapy," he said.

The hospital will soon get a high-dose radiation machine, a compact unit that delivers high-intensity radiation to a small area through catheters.

"It treats from the inside out instead of from the outside in," Smith said.

The new technology is highly concentrated, with patients having treatments twice a day for a week instead of once a day for six weeks.

What's next on the cancer treatment horizon? Smith said it's medication that will go directly to the cancer cells.

Improved treatment will result in higher cure rates, but Smith has already seen a miracle or two along the way. He remembers one patient with a large tumor from one of his kidneys all the way to his stomach. The prognosis was grim, but he fooled his doctors.

"We treated him and he lived another 15 years," Smith said.

Times-News writer Sandy Miller can be reached at 735-3264 or by e-mail at smiller@magicvalley.com.