Radiotherapy Technology

In terms of the technology in radiotherapy, there have been a lot of improvements made in recent years to increase the radiation dose to the tumor tissue while decreasing the damage to the surrounding normal tissue(s).  A representative example of these newer technologies is called stereotactic radiotherapy.  Stereotactic radiotherapy utilizes a sophisticated mathematical coordinating system to precisely locate the tumor to direct and deliver multiple fractions of higher dose radiation from different angles to destroy tumor cells.  Stereotactic radiotherapy is now being used to treat many different types of solid tumors.

Sometimes, a very specific form of stereotactic radiotherapy used for solid tumors is referred to as radiosurgery or stereotactic surgery.  It is called radiosurgery because it utilizes high dose radiation (such as x-ray or g-ray) to precisely focus on the specific area and functions almost like a surgery.  The accuracy can be within several millimeters.  When the total radiation dose is divided into several smaller doses, it is called fractionated stereotactic radiosurgery.

Further improvement on radiosurgery is to combine daily CT scan, (X-ray Computed Tomography) with the stereotactic radiotherapy to make it an image-guided radiation therapy that delivers radiation to the tumor side-by-slide, often referred to as TomoTherapy.  TomoTherapy has been used in many solid tumors including prostate cancer, lung cancer, as well as head and neck cancer.

In recent years, stereotactic radiotherapy is being combined with real-time CT scan (instead of daily CT).  This makes the radiosurgery even more precise and produces much better outcome than previous radiotherapy equipment.

Fractionated stereotactic surgery utilizes high dose radiation (x-ray or -ray) to precisely focus on the specific area in the body to destroy tumor tissues, very similar to surgery.  In this treatment, the dose and the treatment area have to be precisely coordinated to ensure that normal tissues in the proximity suffer the least damage by the high dose radiation; the total dose of radiation is divided into several doses and delivered in several days.  A typical radiosurgery takes 4-5 fractions of radiation, once every other day, and the total treatment period is about 8 to 10 days.

© Jiajiu Shaw, 2015 

Disclaimer: This blog is written solely for informational purposes. It does not constitute the practice of any medical, nursing or other medical professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All contents posted are extracted from the book I am writing, "IS CANCER IN US", to be published in about two months.