One year ago today, I was waiting anxiously to take my oral exam to become board certified by the American Board of Radiology in radiation therapy physics. By the end of my exam, I was already making plans to return to Louisville, KY to retake them next year. Somehow, against all odds, I passed. It [...]
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I have been closely following the sad saga of Daniel Hauser, the Minnesota teen who ran away with his mother rather than continue treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Fortunately, he and his mother have returned to Minnesota, hopefully to continue his treatment. There has been a lot of debate about the ethics of a court forcing [...] One star Mondays is moving to a biweekly format since I didn’t want every 3rd post on this blog to be horrible music. In the meantime, here is a scary story from the Denver Post. As if there weren’t enough side effects from radiation to worry about, a new one has been discovered by the [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] Busy day today, so no time for snark. Here’s Paper Lace. Brilliant. Send this to all your friends. (H/T: The Amateur Scientist via Orac) 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 [...] This week’s installment of one-star Mondays comes from Motown recording artist Charlene. Charlene recorded many songs for Motown, including a duet with Stevie Wonder, but none had the success of her song that reached #3 on the US charts, I’ve Never Been to Me. Here is what is widely considered the definitive version of the [...] Recently, some doctors and radiation biologists have expressed concern about the increase in the number of CT scans given to the general public and the increased dose that results. A 2007 paper by David Brenner and Eric Hall, two very highly respected experts in the biological effects of radiation, sparked a great deal of discussion [...] |
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