How Radiation Shrinks Tumors by Dr Rafael Manon

Key to understanding the way that radiation therapy works is understanding how cancer happens. While different types of cancer have different initial origins, for example a genetic mutation or the effects of a virus, what we think of as "cancer" is the result of abnormal cells that divide and reproduce far more rapidly than normal, healthy cells. Radiation therapy interrupts the growth of those rapidly dividing cells, which grow to form tumors, by disrupting the formation of DNA within the cancer cells. This kills existing cancer cells and stops new ones from forming. After the cancer cells die, the body treats them as normal cellular waste and disposes of them as it would any other dead cell, thus resulting in the shrinking of the tumor or its elimination altogether.

Radiation therapy can be used in multiple ways in cancer treatment. Doctors may use it to destroy tumors entirely and keep cancer from spreading to other parts of the body (known as metastasizing). Radiation can be used before surgery in order to shrink a tumor and make it easier to remove, or it might be used after surgery to destroy any remaining parts of a tumor that could not be safely removed manually. If a cancer cannot be cured entirely, radiation therapy may be used to improve quality of life by shrinking a tumor for the purpose of relieving pain or improving the function of affected organs. Radiation can be directed at a tumor externally using an x-ray machine, or internally using small devices placed near tumor sites.

While there are risks of radiation therapy involving the destruction of healthy cells, researchers in radiation oncology are currently developing techniques to make radiotherapy more precise, and avoid exposing healthy organs, tissues, and cells to radiation beams. Techniques such as helical tomography use smaller radiation beams to pinpoint tumor locations, and the up and coming proton therapy centers will use a different type of radiation that provides easier targeting and diffuses less into surrounding tissues.

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