Radiation: A Positive Cancer Treatment

Radiotherapy, also called radiation therapy, is the treatment of cancer and other diseases with radiation. Radiotherapy is used when the entire primary tumor cannot be surgically removed. Radiotherapy deposits energy

There are several ways radiation therapy can be delivered. Radiation therapy can be external or internal. The most common way is by external radiation in which a radiation is directed at the tumor from a machine (Dollinger, Rosenbaum 62). Internal or systemic radiotherapy delivers radiation by giving a radioactive source intravenously or by injection (62). Depending on the type of cancer, some people are treated with both types of therapy.

Doctors had been using radiation to destroy cancerous cells since the unfolding of X-rays and radium in the 1890s, but both techniques had their own issues. X-ray machines were complicated to make use of, and radium implanted near tumors. In addition, X-rays weren’t strong enough to be entirely effective, and as for both of them, they were quite expensive.

cancer cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Radiation therapy is a treatment that uses high-energy x-rays or other types of radiation to kill cancer cells or keep them from growing. Immunotherapy is a treatment that uses the patient’s immune system to fight cancer. Lastly targeted therapy, is the treatment that uses drugs and other substances to attack cancer cells. Some of these treatments are standard and others are being clinically tested in clinical trials. Patients may enter clinical trials before, during, or after starting their cancer treatment. Follow-up tests may be needed.

tumors are treated but if surgery is not a viable treatment radiation can also be used.

The process of radiation therapy uses small amounts of very high-energy radiation to destroy the cancerous cells, making them unable to reproduce. "About 60% of all patients with cancer receive radiation therapy for curative intent, tumor control, or palliation of

The National Cancer Institute states that radiation therapy, “uses high-energy radiation to shrink tumors and kill cancer cells.” Radiation uses X-rays and gamma rays to shrink the tumors. Because cancer is rapidly growing cells, the cells need to be shrunk. By using radiation, the cancer cells’ DNA gets damaged, when the cell is damaged enough, it will stop growing and eventually die. The negative side to radiation is that it may also damage normal and healthy cells. Like chemotherapy, radiation can be given out in different doses depending on the type of cancer, size, location, etc. Besides the common treatments like radiation, there are newer, effective treatments like

    Cancer is a disease in which cells multiply out of control and gradually build a mass of tissue called a tumor. There has been a large amount of research dedicated to the treatment and cure of cancer. Several types of treatments have been developed. The following are just some of the major examples of cancer therapy: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, biologic therapy, biorhythms, unconventional treatments, and hyperthermia. Each type of treatment is discussed in detail below.

Radiation works by damaging the genes in cancer cells. DNA genes control how cancer cells grow and divide. When radiation damages the genes of the cells, they can not grow and divide any more. Over time, the cancer cells die. This means radiation therapy can be used to kill the cancer cells and shrink

There are numerous approaches that are taken when treating cancer and although they all have the same goal of accomplishing the treatments differ from the way they are administered to the way they work on one’s body. Differing to chemotherapy which happens to be one of the most common methods of treatment used radiation therapy just so happens to be used to target one specific area of the body where the cancerous cells are present and causes effect to that specific area as opposed to the whole body being exposed to cancer fighting drugs. This usually is the result of beams of intense energy where the power is normally coming from X-rays but can often times be delivered from other forms of energy. While it is not guaranteed that healthy cells

Since the discovery of the mysterious disease; cancer, oncologists and physicians are keen on finding a cure for it or at least minimize the risk of it. Treatment methods have evolve over time. One of the effective yet hazardous methods in treatment lately for cancer is by the use of radiation. Radiation therapy is an ionizing radiation that uses gamma rays in high-energy to shrink and destroy the suffering cells. In specific, it targets these irregular cells and cause harm either to the DNA straight away or by creating free radicals, which in turn damages the DNA of cells and cause them to stop growing and die.

Chemotherapy and radiation both work be destroying rapidly growing cancer cells. Chemotherapy does this by sending medication throughout the entire body. Radiation therapy targets the cancer cells more directly, but is sometimes sent throughout the body as well. When it is, the radiation is more likely to make its way into the cancer cells without affecting other tissues. Unfortunately, these treatments both kill some healthy cells, causing some unpleasant side effects. Targeted therapy is sometimes a better option. Although considered a form of chemotherapy, targeted therapy uses chemicals that attack only certain parts of a call rather than the entire entity. This allows the medication to target only the cancer cells that contain these anomalies while avoiding healthy

In 1896, German physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength known as the x-ray. Within three years of his discovery, radiation became used to treat cancer after Henri Bacquerel discovered radium’s ability to kill skin cells due to its radioactivity. The first person to experiment with cancer cells was Henri Danlus, a French doctor. Pierre Curie simultaneously researched and experimented with cancerous cells, and both men came to the same conclusion: radiation not only kills skin cells, yet it kills cancer cells as well. However, contrary to skin cells, cancer cells do not have the ability to regrow. This form of treatment using radiation to exterminate cancer

Today, radiotherapy can be used to shrink or cure early stage cancers, to prevent cancer from recurring, and to treat the symptoms caused by late stage cancer. There are various different types of radiation therapy available today, each with different advantages and disadvantages. It is important to be familiar with the different techniques in order to provide the most effective treatment to cancer

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.