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Home » Radiation Therapy

Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy or radiotherapy is the use of ionizing radiation in a medical way for controlling malignant tumor cells. The use of radiation therapy, as a part of cancer treatment, is different from radiology. In radiation therapy, curative or adjuvant cancer treatment is used. In case of palliative treatment where there is no possibility of cure and the aim is for symptomatic relief or local disease control, radiotherapy is used. Radiation therapy is also used in therapeutic treatments where the therapy provides survival benefit but is not curative. Amongst the various types of radiation therapy, one known as total body irradiation (TBI), is used for preparing the body in receiving bone marrow transplantation.
There are a few applications of radiotherapy in cases of non-malignant conditions, like the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia, pterygium, severe thyroid eye disease, preventing keloid scar growth and heterotopic ossification. In non-malignant cases, radiation therapy is limited partly by worries regarding the risk of cancers induced by radiation.

Radiation therapy is commonly used for treating malignant tumors or cancers in different parts of the body that includes brain also. This therapy can be used as the primary therapy. It is quite a common practice to combine radiation therapy with surgery, hormone therapy and chemotherapy. Radiotherapy can also be used in treating the most common types of cancer in some way. Radiotherapy’s accurate treatment intent, viz. curative, adjuvant, neoadjuvant, palliative, or therapeutic, depends on the type of the tumor, its location and stage, along with the patient’s general health. Commonly, radiotherapy is applied to the tumor. The fields of radiation can also include the draining of those lymph nodes that are involved radiologically or clinically with tumor, or if there is a risk of subclinical malignant spread. It is very essential to include a normal tissue margin all around the tumor for allowing uncertainties in day-to-day set-up and internally tumor motion. These types of uncertainties can be produced by internal movements and movements of external skin marks that are in relation with the position of the tumor.

For sparing the normal tissues, like skin or organs through which radiation must be passed so as to treat the tumor, special shaped radiation beams are used from different angles of exposure. This is done to intersect at the tumor, thus providing a much larger absorbed dose in that particular affected area than in the surrounding healthy tissues.

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