Cancer for Radiation Therapy

Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses beams of high-energy X-rays or particles to kill cancer cells. Radiation therapy is also called radiotherapy or X-ray therapy.

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. 

Radiation therapy damages cells by destroying the genetic material that controls how cells grow and divide. And 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. 

About 55 to 65 percent of cancer patients are treated with radiation at some time during their disease.Radiation therapy is the careful use of high-energy radiation to treat cancer. A radiation oncologist may use radiation to cure cancer or to relieve a cancer patient's pain.Radiation therapy works because the radiation destroys the cancer cells' ability to reproduce and the body naturally gets rid of these cells.

A cancer patient may be treated with radiation alone. Prostate cancer and larynx cancer are often treated in this manner.Sometimes radiation therapy is part of a patient's treatment. For example, a woman may have radiation therapy after breast conserving surgery. She can be cured of her cancer and still keep her breast. When radiation therapy is only part of a patient's treatment it is called adjuvant treatment.