Battling Cancer

Battling Cancer has discussed proton therapy before but did you know that Loma Linda University Medical Center has the nation’s first hospital-based proton treatment center for cancer?

Check out this video on the James M. Slater, M.D. Proton Treatment and Research Center:

More →

Thanks to Lesly Maranan, for passing this along!

From the desk of Dan Ollendorf, MPH, ARM, Chief Review Officer, Institute for Clinical & Economic Review

I am writing concerning the efforts of a new initiative known as the Institute for Clinical & Economic Review (ICER), a new initiative of Harvard Medical School, that seeks to provide an impartial review of new or emerging healthcare technologies that involves ALL relevant stakeholders (including patients). We are currently evaluating permanent brachytherapy and proton beam therapy for prostate cancer, and would like to include patients who have undergone each of these treatments in our discussion.

More →

Radiation therapy remains one of the most common tools for breast cancer treatment, but it has been refined considerably over the years.

Radiation therapy comes in two basic types: internal or external.

External radiation treatments consist of an energetic, highly focused beam used to destroy cancer cells and surrounding tissue. Though the beam is invisible to the eye, it can pass semi-transparently through the skin. The different composition and behavior of the cancer cells, though, causes them to react differently.

More →

By Michael Russell

Most breast cancer patients wonder why radiation is necessary if a breast cancer has been removed. Despite local removal of the cancer tissue, about 30% of women will have a relapse without radiotherapy. Pathologists often have difficulty determining if there is a clear margin of normal tissue surrounding the cancer, given the difficulty of measuring of minuscule amounts of cancer cells. It is also known that there may be “skip” areas between the cancer tissue and small hard-to-detect satellite cancer nodules in the immediate vicinity. Thus, in spite of clear margins, cancer cells may be resting on the other side of the biopsy margins. Cells may have migrated through the breast duct system and come to rest outside of the biopsy site as well. Radiotherapy is important because it has a good chance of destroying those random cancer cells beyond the breast cancer margins.

The method of radiotherapy involves the use of a machine called linear accelerator, which converts radioactive particles into a high-energy radiation beam that is used to treat a specific, defined area of the body. Radiation affects cells in the area of the tissue beneath the directed beam of radioactive particles and dividing cells are affected more by radiation than resting, non-cancerous cells. Cancer cells are, therefore, more affected than healthy cells, but both cell types are damaged by radiation. On the other hand, normal cells have a greater ability to repair themselves following radiation exposure, compared to cancer cells. Radiation places cancer cells into a cell death cycle at the time of the next scheduled cell division. This cell death cycle is known as apoptosis.

More →

By Carol Kornmehl

Radiation therapy is a simple, painless, and generally well-tolerated tool for treating and even curing breast cancer. One of the most common side effects of radiation therapy to the breast (after a lumpectomy) or to the chest wall (after a mastectomy) is skin irritation. The reaction and its extent differ for every woman. Because radiation therapy is often such an important part of breast cancer treatment, it is important to know how to mitigate its side effects in order to gain the greatest benefit from the therapy.

(Read the rest of this article …)