Radiation therapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses beams of intense energy to destroy cancer cells. Radiation therapy most often gets its power from X-rays (photons), but the power can also come from protons, electrons or other types of energy.
The term “radiation therapy” most often refers to external beam radiation therapy. With this form of therapy, the high-energy X-rays are generated from a machine outside your body, aiming the beams at a precise point inside your body. This is in contrast to brachytherapy, where a source of radiation is placed inside the body.
Radiation damages cells by interfering with the genetic material (DNA) that controls how cells grow and divide. While both healthy and cancerous cells are damaged by radiation therapy, the goal of treatment is to limit damage to as few normal, healthy cells as possible. This is accomplished by delivering treatments over many days and with very precise targeting of the cancer.
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At Radiant Care, we provide a wide range of radiation oncology services:
If you have questions about your cancer treatment options, please give us a call or ask your doctor for a referral.
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Three-dimensional Conformal Radiation Therapy
This is the most common form of external beam radiation. Radiation is delivered from various angles around the body by a linear accelerator. Radiation is focused on the target where the beams intersect. This allows higher
doses of radiation to be concentrated on the target region while limiting doses to adjacent, uninvolved regions.
Electron Beam Radiation Therapy
Electron beams are primarily used to treat superficial tumors, particularly skin cancers. Unlike X-rays that pass all the way through the body, electrons don’t travel very far in tissue before delivering their energy, making them ideal to treat cancers close to the surface.
Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)
When a target volume is irregular or close to critical structures, IMRT is often used. With IMRT, the radiation beams have regions of relatively high and low radiation doses corresponding to areas that require higher or lower radiation
doses, respectively. For example, IMRT for prostate cancer allows a high dose to be delivered to the prostate while keeping doses to the adjacent rectum and bladder below their tolerance levels. This technique allows higher doses of radiation to be delivered safely than what can be achieved with three-dimensional conformal treatments.
RapidArc
Similar to IMRT, the beams in RapidArc have areas of high or low relative dose. The difference is that in RapidArc, the beam is continuously moving around the patient in a 360 degree arc instead of using a fixed number of overlapping beams. This allows even greater precision of radiation dose delivery in some cases, particularly for treatment volumes that wrap around other volumes that require protection, such as the esophagus or spinal cord.
Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT)
Delivering a precise radiation treatment requires precise knowledge about the position of the target. Our treatment machines are able to acquire a CT scan prior to treatment for image-guided therapy. If the CT shows that the target volume is not precisely where we expect it to be, adjustments can be made to the patient’s position before treatment. This technique eliminates much of the uncertainty about the daily treatment setup, allowing smaller treatment volumes to be used and ultimately translating into fewer side effects.
Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy
SBRT is a form of external beam radiation therapy that delivers a higher dose per treatment than what is usually given with conventional external beam radiation, over a shorter time period. SBRT is typically completed within three to five treatments. Generally, higher
doses of radiation result in greater side effects, but with SBRT, side effects are limited because the treatment volumes are small. SBRT is particularly useful for treating small tumors in the lung or elsewhere in the body and is increasingly used in the treatment of prostate cancer. Additionally, patients with a limited volume of metastatic disease, known as oligometastatic disease, can benefit from SBRT to the metastatic sites.
Stereotactic Radiosurgery
SRS is a form of external beam radiation that delivers high doses of radiation to very small volumes within the brain. SRS is typically given in a single day, but can be delivered over three to five days for larger, more complex tumors. Prior to the development of SRS, many brain
tumors were treated with large volumes of radiation covering the entire brain. With SRS, less of the brain is exposed to radiation, resulting in more limited side effects. Additionally, SRS is able to deliver higher doses of radiation to the target than is possible with whole brain radiation, resulting in better outcomes. SRS is typically used to treat cancers that have metastasized to the brain, but is also used for non-cancerous growths such as meningiomas, pituitary adenomas, arteriovenous malformations and vestibular schwannomas.
External beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer requires delivery of high doses of radiation to the prostate while limiting dose to nearby organs such as the rectum and bladder. SpaceOAR is a gel-filled medical device consisting mostly of water that is inserted into the space between the prostate and
rectum, creating space between the two organs. This extra space protects the rectum, limiting exposure to the high dose radiation targeting the prostate. Studies have shown that SpaceOAR placement results in fewer urinary, rectal and sexual side effects of prostate cancer treatment.
While most radiation treatments are delivered from outside the body, radiation can also be delivered internally, directly targeting the tumor. With this form of radiation, known as brachytherapy, small radioactive “seeds” are placed during an outpatient surgical procedure. The seeds stay in
the body permanently, continually exposing the tumor to radiation over a period of many weeks or months. This allows higher doses of radiation to be delivered than what can safely be achieved with external beam radiation. Brachytherapy is particularly useful for prostate cancer, where the target (prostate) is near other organs (rectum and bladder) that cannot tolerate high dose radiation. Studies have shown that this approach results in higher cure rates for certain forms of prostate cancer than what can be achieved with external beam radiation therapy.