Radiation And Nuclear Radiation Therapy

In radiation therapy, certain treatment plans require a water-equivalent material called a bolus to raise the maximum dose buildup (Dmax) closer to the surface of the skin. One of the most common materials used to create this more superficial treatment dose is a commercial product called Superflab. Superflab is a manufactured vinyl gel material that is uniform in thickness, easy to cut, and reusable (Radiation Products Inc, 2010). Therapists use other materials in clinical settings, but there is currently very little research available comparing alternative bolus materials and their respective Dmax values. The limited amount of research that is available look at different materials such as wet gauze and other similar materials for their easy,

Kingdom. All children in both groups were born 8 years after the melt down. “

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

Advances in both radiography and radiation treatment keep on advancing and get to be more sophisticated. Cases incorporate digital subtraction angiography (DSA) in which, apparently, there is the potential for more prominent inclusion by radiographers and by radiation therapists in image guided radiation treatment. Looking even to the moderately later past underscores the degree to which change is happening in the radiography and radiation treatment work environment. Case in point, ten years prior it was radiologists who embedded cannulas for CT patients (AIR 2014, 1). Presently radiographers and attendants attempt the assignment. In private radiology hones, Australian radiographers now consistently embed central lines and do feature joint, shoulder, arm, and tendon infusions under supervision.

What do cancer, radiation, and technology have in common? The links between the three are quite extraordinary. Cancer is a disease that accounts for 13% of all deaths in the world (Delfino and Day 1). The disease has an impact on patients, friends and their love ones. According to WebMD, radiation is energy that travels in the form of waves through radiation therapy. Through radiation therapy, radiation is used to stop, slow or cure the growth of cancer. With technology, radiologists can treat cancer patients through radiation and special computerized imaging (WebMD).

Cancer is a genetic, heritable disease in which abnormal cells divide rapidly destroying normal body cells, often being fatal. Cancer can occur in any body tissue; skin, organs, and parts of the reproductive system (Duda). There are various activities linked to different types of cancer, such as smoking, too much sun exposure, gene mutations, carcinogens, and viruses. A major cause of cancer, dating all the way back to the 1950’s, is radiation. Atomic testing ordered by the U.S. Government has been suspected to be the cause of many deaths linked to radiation-related diseases (Williams 149).

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.

Radiation therapy is a type of treatment modality that administers radiation to patients with cancer. This form of treatment has many components that contribute toward ensuring the malignant tissue within the body is being adequately treated. One of the major components in radiation therapy is the use of bolus. Bolus is a material placed on the skin to help bring the radiation dose higher to the skin surface within the patient (Khan 2012). Since there are no research studies in the radiation oncology field which compare alternative bolus materials in providing maximum dose build-up, the purpose of this study is to close this informational gap by comparing the following types of bolus: Superflab, neon-green Play-Doh, orange Play-Doh, and uncooked rice.

It was about 5 years ago that I first realized I wanted to become a doctor .We were invited over for lunch at my father’s colleague’s house. When we finished eating we got to meet his daughter, she was very beautiful and about 3 years my senior. She wore a beanie at home and upon realizing why she had worn it my heart just melted. It was at this time we came to know she had a brain tumor diagnosed at an advanced stage.

Radiation oncology is a specialty that involves treating and curing cancer with radiation. It falls under the career cluster of health science. A radiation oncologist provides treatment to thousands of cancer patients through the use of high-energy radiation. Every day people all around the world depend on radiation oncologists to be devoted and perform their many tasks carefully and effectively.

While healthy babies are born every day, not everyone is so fortunate. In many cases, diagnostic radiology is required for patients during their childhood. Can having this radiation during the formative years lead to adverse effects later in life? The biggest concern from radiation is the risk of cancer. Cancer can occur at any dose from ionizing radiation because it is a stochastic effect, meaning that it is probabilistic. The probability of a stochastic effect, such as cancer, increases as the dose increases. While receiving this radiation may be necessary, it can cause some serious trouble later in life, such as breast cancer, leukemia, and thyroid cancer.

Each treatment session will take about 10-30 minutes and you won’t usually need to stay in hospital.

Although radioactivity was at first just at the surface, later studies showed that these radioactive elements were absorbed by the soil and that their effects would be long-lasting (Gould 69). Within a short amount of time animals consumed these radioactive plants, and these particles worked their way up the food chain. Soon, not only berry crops in Austria had to be discarded, but also milk supplies in Italy (68, 69). More than twenty European nations received enough fallout to require food restrictions, and 100 million people altered their diets in the ensuing months (Flavin 6, 16). Adding to this paranoia was the fact that even the experts had little knowledge of what was happening. Most nations were unprepared, and many implemented differing safety guidelines for food (15). Some governments outright lied to quell the public’s fear (Gould 70). In the end, millions of people were exposed to unhealthy doses of radiation, and estimates for future deaths from cancer caused by this exposure range as high as one million, with half being fatal (Flavin 18). These are clearly examples of the externalities of a nuclear disaster.

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.

The Chernobyl accident was a disastrous nuclear event that happened on 26th April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The Chernobyl disaster is classified as a level 7 event according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (only two events have been classified this high in the past) and has caused damages that consist of the cost of 500,000 workers and 18 billion rubles, 31 deaths according to the Soviet casualty count (this is still being disputed) and between 4000-27000 affected future deaths due to radiation exposure [G1].