Informative Essay On Radiation Therapy

I have always been interested in the medical field. My father is a physiotherapist and my mother has a bachelorette in Microbiology and is a laboratory technologist. I have grown up having science-themed discussions around the dinner table and books lying around the house. With the experience of my parents at their respected professions, I did not have the feeling that these paths were the correct fit for me. I liked the hands on side of physiotherapy but I wanted something more technology related. I searched the medical field for a career that combined my fascination for both human science and technology in addition to being able to interact with patients. My research on Radiation Therapy instantly established a thought that this is a career

“Don’t give up, don’t ever give up.” The words of the great Jimmy Valvano. Jimmy was a Men’s Basketball Coach at N.C. State University. He is one of the greatest coaches of all time. But he is also the man who delivered the “Never Give Up” speech at the ESPY Awards in 1993. This has inspired so many people. It’s the thought of Cancer that often brings Jimmy into mind. Stuart Scott is also very inspirational when it comes to cancer. A real inspiration is Mrs. Spatz. She has beat cancer 4 times. Over and over again, she has fought and beat cancer. She is now a teacher at Wyndcroft Private School in Pottstown. Although she is my mother, she creates inspiration for many

1. In 1895 the discovery of X-rays by the German scientist of physics, Wilhelm Roentgen, created an amazing step forward in the history of medicine. For the first time ever, the inner workings of the body could be made visible without having to operate.

Radiation therapy can be used anywhere in the body to treat any kind of cancer. Depending on what type of radiation therapy, it can have some side effects. The most common ones include fatigue, hair loss near the treated area, and skin darkening in the area exposed to a beam of radiation. ("Radiation Therapy for Cancer,” 1) There are also safety concerns that patients have when they are treated with radiation therapy. Many people that receive radiation therapy treatment, worry about exposing family and love ones to radiation, as well as the side effects. Radiation effects on the normal tissues are divided into acute and chronic effects (Schreiber). Acute effects occur during the course of therapy and during the post therapy period (approximately 2-3 weeks after the completion of a course of irradiation) (Schreiber).

1895 – X-rays were discovered accidentally by physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen. Rontgen was working on a experiment and testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass. He noticed that a nearby tube emitted fluorescent glow of crystals. The air in the tube was released, high voltage applied, the same tube emitted a fluorescent glow. When Rontgen covered the tube in a heavy black paper, a green light could be seen. He concluded that a new light ray was being broadcast. Rontgen discovered that the light was very powerful and the same ray could pass through human tissue, but not through bones and metal objects. Medical applications were soon to follow. ("History of radiography," )

Cancer is an incurable and unpredictable disease that, if left untreated, will likely result in death for the men, women, and children who must fight it. Sadly, approximately 36% of people will develop cancer during their lifetime, and of that percentage, fewer than 15% will survive, according to the National Cancer Institute. Along with surgery and chemotherapy, radiation is one of the few known methods for treating cancer, but it does not come without harmful side effects. While radiation therapy is currently a proven method for treating cancer, dangers to patients often outweigh its benefits, therefore a safer method for effectively treating and ultimately curing cancer.

In order to fulfill my dream to work in the medical field, I plan to become a radiation therapist. Radiation therapist treat cancer and other diseases in patients by administering radiation treatments. In order to be successful at this they damage cells by destroying the genetic material that controls how cells grow and divide. Healthy and cancerous cells are damaged, but the goal is to destroy as few healthy cells as possible. Their work environment is mostly in hospitals, physician offices, and outpatient centers. They work full time and receive an estimate of $38.00 an hour and around $77,560 per year according to the records of 2012. In order to become a radiation therapist you will have to complete a program that leads to an associate’s degree or further your education with a bachelor’s degree in radiation therapy. You must be licensed in most states to work with such technology. The benefits of becoming a radiation therapist are the pay is excellent, they usually work day shift, and the fact

Nearly 14.5 million Americans have had a history stint with some type of cancer and were still alive on January 1, 2014(American Cancer Society, 2016). There will be an estimated 1,685,210 new cancer cases and 595, 590 deaths in 2016 attibuted to caner in the U.S. (American Cancer Society,2016 ) Those astonishing numbers do not even account for the cancer patients family and friends whose lives are also affected this horrific disease. In order to get a glimpse of what a cancer patient has to go though, I decided to read Stuart Scott’s memoir, Every Day I Fight, by Larry Platt. He is an ESPN anchor that was diagnosed with a rare form of Appendiceal Cancer. It was a great book, and wanted to discuss the merits this book had on showing what

In Year 8, a radiotherapist came into my school with a request - to help him develop a game to explain the process of radiotherapy to his patients. I decided to help out of curiosity, thinking that it would be interesting and that I'd learn something new. It was during the development process that I learnt my first lines of Python - which I now use extensively for my programs. That experience fueled my fascination with technology and its impact on the world around me, watching how the application of computing in other fields has bettered the lives of others.

X-rays were discovered by accident in 1895 by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. Roentgen was already an accomplished scientist with forty-eight published papers. He had a reputation among the scientific community as a dedicated scientist with precise experimental methods. Roentgen had been conducting experiments at the University of Wurzburg on the effect of cathode-rays on the luminescence of certain chemicals. Roentgen had placed a cathode-ray tube, which is a partially evacuated glass tube with metal electrodes at each end, in a black cardboard box in his darkened laboratory. He sent electricity through the cathodre-ray tube and noticed something strange his laboratory. He saw a flash of light

Radiation therapy can be tough especially for women. Women have to deal with so much pressure and stress every day. You need to have the healthiest diet possible. This article will ensure you guys know the do’s and don’ts of what to eat and drink during radiation therapy.

The X-Ray was invented in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. It all started with a vacuum tube called a Crookes tube, with this Roentgen noticed that by pressing a button that activated an electric current through it a shadow was projected onto a screen that showed the photograph of his wife’s hand with a ring

Nevertheless, removing the most of the tumor in the affected area by the surgery, women tend to redevelop the disease that left still. For this reason, radiotherapy is applied after the breast conserving surgery. Understanding the mechanism of the radiation is that generating free radicals to destroy the cells by producing a large amount of energy that lead to breaking a single and double stranded DNA. A pregnant woman should avoid the radiotherapy, moreover the patients with previous cancer histories who was treated before (Buchholz, 2009). Chemotherapy is basically systemic therapy, yet has limited opportunity which depends on the affected number of lymph nodes, the size of the cancer, the presence of hormone receptors, and the amount of

He named this new discovery “X-Ray” because x is the term for an unknown number in mathematics. It was later called “Roentgen Rays” although changed back to “X-Ray”. With his new discovery, he found that the rays would travel through human tissue, but leave a shadow of bone and metal behind. One of his first experiments was on his wife Bertha’s hand with a ring on her finger in 1895.

In 2007, it is predicted that almost 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States (Pickle et al., 2007). More than half of these cancer patients will undergo the use of radiation as a means for treating cancer at some point during the course of their disease (Perez and Brady, 1998). Cancer, a disease caused by an uncontrollable growth of abnormal cells, affects millions of people around the world. Radiotherapy is one of the well known various methods used to treat cancer, where high powered rays are aimed directly at the tumor from the outside of the body as external radiation or an instrument is surgically placed inside the body producing a result of internal radiation. Radiation is delivered to the cancerous regions of the body to damage and destroy the cells in that area, terminating the rapid growth and division of the cells. Radiation therapy has been used by medicine as a treatment for cancer from the beginning of the twentieth century, with its earliest beginnings coming from the discovery of x-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen. With the advancements in physics and computer programming, radiation had greatly evolved towards the end of the twentieth century and made the radiation treatment more effective. Radiation therapy is a curative treatment approach for cancer because it is successful in killing cancerous tumor cells and stop them from regenerating.