Treating Cancer - Radiation Oncology

Radiation Oncology

 

Modern medicine provides several ways of treating cancer such as surgery, chemotherapy, and hormone therapy. One of the main ways to treat cancer is to deliver ionizing radiation to the tumor. Physicians who specialize in this type of cancer treatment make up a discipline of medicine called radiation oncology.

 

Radiation oncologists, unlike most other physicians, must have a fundamental knowledge of medicine, cancer, and physics. The delivery of radiation therapy has evolved well beyond simply bringing a source of radiation near a patient with cancer. The modern practice of radiation oncology is a highly sophisticated science of delivering properly dosed radiation in a precisely focused manner. Modern radiation oncology is dedicated to the presumption that only the tumor receives the full measure of radiation energy and the surrounding tissue is left unscathed. Radiation is, after all, one of the causes of cancer, thus delivering treatment only to the tumor is supremely important.

 

 

Radiation oncology could not take place without a team of medical specialists. In addition to the radiation oncologist who is a physician that has received many years of training beyond medical school, each treatment includes a radiation physicist, a dosimetrist, and a radiation technician as members of the radiation oncology team. These professionals will study the tumor type, take very precise CT scans and MRIs of the tumor, and determine the best approach for the radiation therapy. In order to make sure that the dose of ionizing radiation is going to reach precisely where it is aimed, a trial treatment without radiation is usually performed prior to the actual treatment. Devices can deliver radiation so precisely that they have earned names such as radiation surgery and gamma knife. In the case of the gamma knife and brain cancer, single beams of relatively low energy gamma radiation are aimed at a tumor from dozens of locations around the skull. Despite being low radiation sources individually, when they are simultaneously focused on the cancer, the gamma knife can destroy the tumor while leaving the tissue between the skull and the tumor relatively untouched.

 

Although it is a major part of radiation therapy, radiation oncology is not simply the practice of providing radiation from an external source. A new and exciting form of radiation therapy is the process known as brachytherapy. Brachytherapy involves the placement of small bits of radioactive material directly inside a tumor or organ that is cancerous. Prostate cancer brachytherapy is perhaps the most well-known application of brachytherapy. Prostate gland “seeding” has provided cancer treatment to many men who would have otherwise lost the gland to surgery.

 

The latest advancement in radiation oncology is the delivery of extremely precise radiation through the use of radioactive antibodies. Antibodies, the immune system’s super-precise molecular recognition system, can be chemically linked to radioactive atoms. The antibodies seek out and bind to the tumor (and only the tumor) while the radioactive substance kills the cells that are nearby. This technology promises to revolutionize the practice of radiation oncology as it is further developed and perfected.