Stereotactic Body 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

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.

One other treatment for lung cancer is radiation. Doctors can use radiation before surgery to shrink a tumor. After

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).

The treatments for lung cancer depends on the stage and type of lung cancer and involves Surgery, Radiation therapy, Chemotherapy, Targeted therapy, and Lung cancer is usually treated with a combination of therapies in general. In surgery the tumor and the nearby lymph nodes in the chest are typically removed to offer the best chance for a cure. For non-small cell lung cancer, a lobectomy which involves the removal of the entire lobe where the tumor is located has shown to be very effective. Unfortunately, Surgery may not be possible in some patient due to the stage and type of lung cancer they have. Chemotherapy involves drugs used to kill cancer cells. A combination of medications is often used and may be prescribed before or after surgery, or radiation therapy. It can improve survival and lessen lung cancer symptoms in all patients, even those with widespread lung cancer. Radiation therapy contains the use of high-energy x-rays or other particles to destroy cancer cells. Side effects include fatigue, malaise, loss of appetite, and skin irritation at the treatment site. Radiation pneumonitis is the irritation and inflammation of the lung, which occurs in 15% of patients. It is important that the radiation treatments avoid the healthy parts of the lung.

Treatment: As long as the cancer has not spread to outside of the lung, it can be removed with surgical resection. There are now less invasive ways to remove cancer from the lungs, such as using a small video camera to see inside the chest, resulting in smaller incisions. There has very recently been a new way to treat non small cell lung cancer that would otherwise be inoperable. Shown to be more effective than normal radiation therapy and simply observing the cancers progress, stereotatic body radiation therapy can ???. Laser treatment is sometimes used to unblock air passages that are blocked by a tumour and attempt to control some spreading of the cancer cells. It is different to the other ‘treatments’ as it doesn’t actually provide a solution to getting rid of the cancer, but makes the symptoms more bearable for the patient.

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.

Cancer, it can affect anyone; it can affect any part of the body but what is it? Cancer results from the abnormality in the body's cells. This occurs when the cells divided and grow. Disruption in the system of the growth and division of a cell results in an uncontrolled division and proliferation of cells that form a mass which leads to cancer. The patient outcome for cancer is different for everyone, but it is also different with each type. In the respiratory department, a major type of cancer we will deal with is lung cancer. Lung cancer, however, has different types and stages, but for this paper, we are going to talk about Stage IIIA non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In the article titled “Stage IIIA Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer” it states

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.

A Radiation Therapist treats cancer and multiple other diseases patients have by administering radiation treatment. In some cases, employers only require completion of a 12-month certificate program to be hired. But, It’s more likely to get a job if you further your education with an associate’s or bachelors degree in Radiation Therapy. In most states, radiation therapists must be licensed. To become a licensed Radiation Therapist, you have to graduate from a radiation therapy program and be certified by the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists. Mostly every college offers the schooling it takes but the highest ranked college in the U.S. for Radiation Therapy is Oregon Health And Science University in Portland, Oregon.

Radiation therapy is the ionization of atoms in tissues resulting in formation of highly reactive radicals in a well-defined, restricted volume (1). In other words, ionizing radiations are used to eradicate tumors and at the same time preserve structure and function of normal tissue. A limitation is prevented from being a problem. If bone marrow or neuronal cells are destroyed or injured, they do not regenerate. However, with radiation therapy, these cells are often saved from injury or destruction, unless the tumor is infecting bone marrow or neuronal cells. Today, radiation therapy is the most popular type of cancer therapy in use. It is used to treat one-half to two-thirds of all cancers, which translates to more than ten percent of the population

|Specific Purpose: |To inform readers on the causes, effects and treatments of lung cancer. |

The results showed that both treatment types were similar when it came to the major components associated with a successful treatment, but the VMAT LINAC plan had slightly better results than the MR guided tri-cobalt 60 plan (Wojcieszynski et al, 2017). Another study done in in Sutton, United Kingdom also concluded similar results, in that MR LINACs had similar treatment results as traditional LINAC plans (Bainbridge et al., 2016). This study discussed the treatment planning techniques of each modality, and compared the doses of various targets including the lung, heart, esophagus, skin and GTV (Bainbridge et al., 2016). This is evidence that the use of MR LINACs can be beneficial to treat lung cancer patients, as it provides equal treatment outcomes without the added radiation dose for pre-treatment imaging.

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.

Selected abdominal/thoracic and pelvic tumor motions were all obtained by Per Polsen [1, 2] as representing characteristic three-dimensional motion patterns for those sites. For the lung, motions represented a “typical motion”, high frequency breathing, predominantly lateral motion and characterized baseline shift from planned position. The represented prostate motions were continuous drift, persistent excursion from planned position, transient excursion and high frequency excursion.