One of the risks of radiation therapy is that radiation will kill the tumor but induce another cancer elsewhere in the body. This happens when tissue nearby the tumor either is in the path of the treatment beams or receives dose from radiation that gets scattered. Fortunately, the risk is often very low and any [...]
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So now that we know the why of radiation therapy, it’s time to move on to the how. Therapeutic radiation comes from one of two types of sources: X rays from a particle accelerator or gamma rays from radioactive material. Radioactive material is mostly used for brachytherapy, in which the radioactive material is placed inside [...] In my last post on the science behind radiation therapy, I talked about the therapeutic ratio. This is the ratio of probability of killing a tumor versus probability of normal tissue complications. I also talked about some ways to improve the therapeutic ratio such as fractionating the dose or planning the treatment so that the [...] One of the biggest surprises for many of our new patients in radiation therapy is how much time it takes to get treated. They expect that they will come in, get treated, and be finished on that day. Imagine their surprise when they are told they will have to get treated each workday for up [...] Of all the types of cancer we treat with radiation, head and neck cancer has by far the worst side effects. Head and neck cancer comes in many different forms, but one thing those tumors have in common is that they are usually very close to radiation sensitive structures like the parotid glands (which produce [...] This is part 1 of what will hopefully be an ongoing series of posts to attempt to remove some of the mystery around radiation therapy. I’m going to begin by explaining the rationale behind treating cancer with radiation and then move on to the behind the scenes details that go into delivering a therapeutic dose [...] |
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