27 December 2021, Monday

Your Guide to Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is another treatment modality, which is very useful in cancer treatment. Radiotherapy uses a certain type of energy called as ionizing radiation (which is made of electromagnetic rays – powerful X-rays/gamma rays, or high energy sub-atomic particles like atomic nuclei, protons, neutrons, etc.) to kill/damage cancer cells and shrink tumors.

Radiation therapy injures or destroys cells in the area being treated by damaging their genetic material (DNA), either killing them or affecting their ability to grow and multiply.

Although radiation damages both cancer cells and normal cells, cancer cells are much more vulnerable to the damaging effects of radiation, while most normal cells can recover from its effects and function properly.

This is one of the reasons why radiation in most cases is given in divided doses over a number of days, which gives normal cells/tissues time to repair and recover. This is called as ‘fractionation’ of the radiation dose. The goal of radiation therapy is to damage or destroy as many cancer cells as possible, while limiting harm to surrounding healthy tissue.

When radiation is given after surgery, it is called ‘adjuvant radiotherapy’. This is given to the region of surgery with the intention of killing any stray cancer cell or cells, which may have been inadvertently left behind, thus providing additional security against the possibility of local recurrence of the disease.

Among the major bone sarcomas, radiotherapy plays an important role in the local treatment of certain cases of Ewing’s sarcoma.

Further Reads:

1. What is grading of the response to the Neo-Adjuvant Chemotherapy?

2. What is Radiotherapy?

3. What is Limb Salvage Surgery?