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| Welcome to Radiation Therapy Center |
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| Internal & External Radiation Therapy • Radiation Oncology • Radiation Treatment |
| EXTERNAL BEAM RADIATION THERAPY |
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During external beam radiation therapy, a beam (or multiple beams) of radiation is directed through the skin to the cancer and the immediate surrounding area in order to destroy the main tumor and any nearby cancer cells.
To minimize side effects, the treatments are typically given five days a week, Monday through Friday, for a number of weeks. This allows doctors to get enough radiation into the body to kill the the cancer while giving healthy cells time to recover.
The radiation beam is usually generated by a machine called a linear accelerator. The linear accelerator, or linac, is capable of producing high-energy x-rays or electrons for the treatment of your cancer.
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Using treatment planning computers and software, your treatment team controls the size and shape of the beam, as well as how it is directed at your body, to effectively treat your tumor while sparing the surrounding normal tissue. Several special types of external beam therapy are discussed in the next sections. These are used for specific types of cancer, and your radiation oncologist will recommend one of these treatments if he or she believes it will help you.
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| Proton Beam Therapy |
Neutron Beam Therapy |
Stereotactic Radiotherapy |
| Uses protons rather than X-rays to treat certain types of cancer. Allows doctors to better focus the dose on the tumor with the potential to reduce the dose to nearby healthy tissue. |
A specialized form of radiation therapy that can be used to treat certain tumors that are very difficult to kill using conventional radiation therapy. |
Sometimes refered to as Stereotactic Radiosurgery, this technique allows the radiation oncologist to precisely focus beams of radiation to destroy certain tumors, sometimes in only one treatment. |
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- Three-Dimensional Conformal Radiation Therapy (3D-CRT)
Tumors are not regular; they come in different shapes and sizes. Three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy, or 3D-CRT, uses computers and special imaging techniques such as CT, MR or PET scans to show the size, shape and location of the tumor as well as surrounding organs.
Your radiation oncologist can then precisely tailor the radiation beams to the size and shape of your tumor with multileaf collimators or custom fabricated field-shaping blocks.
Because the radiation beams are very precisely directed, nearby normal tissue receives less radiation and is able to heal more quickly.
- Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT)
- Specialized form of 3D-CRT
- Radiation is broken into many "beamlets" and the intensity of each can be adjusted individually.
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