Why radiation therapy

A person should weigh the potential risks and benefits when deciding on a cancer treatment. Radiation therapy is a common treatment for cancer. A person may receive radiation therapy alone or in combination with other treatments. External beam radiation and internal radiation therapy, or brachytherapy, are the main types of radiation therapy. Radiation therapy is a treatment for cancer. A person may receive it alongside another treatment or alone.

Find out why doctors recommend it, what it…. Radiation side effects can include skin changes, nausea, thyroid issues, and more. Here, learn about the types of radiation, the effects, and care…. Proton therapy is a relatively new type of radiation therapy for treating cancer.

It is possible to deliver high doses that destroy cancer cells…. Radiation therapy can treat prostate cancer. It can kill cancer cells and shrink a tumor. In the later stages of the disease, it can help relieve…. Radiation can be an effective treatment for breast cancer, but it does have side effects.

Doctors may recommend this therapy in combination with…. What to know about radiation therapy. About Types Method Who it is for Cancer types Before treatment During treatment Other treatments Risks Outlook Summary Radiation therapy is the term for treatment types that use radiation to destroy or shrink cancer cells and tumors. What is radiation therapy?

Types of radiation therapy. How it works. Why people receive radiation therapy. Types of cancer it treats. Read more about what happens during radiotherapy. As well as killing cancer cells, radiotherapy can damage some healthy cells in the area being treated. The radiation from implants or injections can stay in your body for a few days, so you may need to stay in hospital and avoid close contact with other people for a few days as a precaution.

Read more about the side effects of radiotherapy. The term "radiation therapy" most often refers to external beam radiation therapy.

During this type of radiation, the high-energy beams come from a machine outside of your body that aims the beams at a precise point on your body. During a different type of radiation treatment called brachytherapy brak-e-THER-uh-pee , radiation is placed inside your body.

Radiation therapy damages cells by destroying the genetic material that controls how cells grow and divide. While both healthy and cancerous cells are damaged by radiation therapy, the goal of radiation therapy is to destroy as few normal, healthy cells as possible. Normal cells can often repair much of the damage caused by radiation. More than half of all people with cancer receive radiation therapy as part of their cancer treatment. Doctors use radiation therapy to treat just about every type of cancer.

Radiation therapy is also useful in treating some noncancerous benign tumors. Your doctor may suggest radiation therapy as an option at different times during your cancer treatment and for different reasons, including:. Radiation therapy side effects depend on which part of your body is being exposed to radiation and how much radiation is used. You may experience no side effects, or you may experience several. Most side effects are temporary, can be controlled and generally disappear over time once treatment has ended.

Some side effects may develop later. For example, in rare circumstances a new cancer second primary cancer that's different from the first one treated with radiation may develop years later. Ask your doctor about potential side effects, both short and long term, that may occur after your treatment. Before you undergo external beam radiation therapy, your health care team guides you through a planning process to ensure that radiation reaches the precise spot in your body where it's needed.

Learn more about proton therapy. Image-guided radiation therapy IGRT. This refers to the practice of using daily images of each treatment field to confirm patient positioning and make sure the target is in the field.

These daily images are compared to the images used to plan treatment. IGRT allows your doctor to make each treatment field smaller. This allows better targeting of the tumor and helps reduce damage to healthy tissue. Stereotactic radiation therapy SRT. This treatment delivers a large, precise radiation therapy dose to a small tumor area. The patient must remain very still.

Head frames or individual body molds help limit movement. SRT is often given as a single treatment or in fewer than 10 treatments.

Some patients may need more than one course of SRT. Internal radiation therapy is also called brachytherapy. This type of radiation therapy is when radioactive material is placed into the cancer or surrounding tissue. Implants may be permanent or temporary and may require a hospital stay. Permanent implants. These are tiny steel seeds that contain radioactive material.

The capsules are about the size of a grain of rice. They deliver most of the radiation therapy around the implant area. This requires safety measures to protect others from radiation exposure.

Over time, the implants lose radioactivity. And the inactive seeds remain in the body. Temporary internal radiation therapy. This is when radiation therapy is given in one of these ways:. The radiation stays in the body for anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. Most people receive radiation therapy for just a few minutes.

Sometimes, people receive internal radiation therapy for more time. If so, they stay in a private room to limit other people's exposure to the radiation.

Intraoperative radiation therapy IORT. This treatment delivers radiation therapy to the tumor during surgery using either external-beam or internal radiation therapy. IORT allows surgeons to move away healthy tissue in advance. This treatment is useful when vital organs are close to the tumor. Systemic radiation therapy.