Surgery & Inpatient Care 

Advanced Medicine. Trusted Care. When You Need It Most.
When patients of the Jane Thompson Russell Cancer Care Center require more than outpatient care, such as surgery and inpatient hospitalization for cancer-related illnesses, they don't have to look far.

As part of the Franciscan Cancer Center, our patients have immediate access to the most advanced surgical techniques and compassionate inpatient cancer care available in the region.

At sister-hospital St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, the full range of oncologic surgeries is performed including: abdominal, breast, colorectal, gynecologic, neurologic, thoracic, urologic and other general surgeries.

Gamma Knife®
St. Joseph Medical Center is also home to state-of-the-art Gamma Knife® technology. Gamma Knife is a proven technology which gives doctors the option of using a highly focused form of pinpoint cobalt radiation to treat many disorders of the brain without ever making an incision, or negatively affecting healthy brain tissue. Over 300,000 patients have received Gamma Knife treatment worldwide.

This leading-edge technology is now considered the gold standard of care for non-invasive treatment of many brain tumors (some previously considered inoperable), vascular malformations, and neurological disorders. The Gamma Knife focuses 201 tiny beams of radiation on one computer-mapped focal point (target) in the brain and is accurate within one half the width of a human hair.

Gamma Knife is typically a one-time, four-hour session treatment. Patients do not lose their hair, and generally return to normal activities within 48 hours. Since there are no incisions or general anesthetic, patients have only minimal pain or side effects.