New radiation therapy helping those with liver cancer

Traditional cancer radiation therapy is delivered from the outside, an external beam aimed at internal organs. Now there's a new kind of radiation for liver cancer that works from the inside out. A two-inch cancerous tumor in the liver of Ruben Caudillo is threatening his life. Hepatitis C has led to liver cancer for 55-year-old Caudillo, who is not a candidate for surgery.

A new technique may help extend Caudillo's life. It's called therasphere. An interventional radiologist snakes a catheter through the groin to the liver and then delivers millions of tiny glass beads that emit radiation. The beads get lodged in the vessels of the tumor and destroy cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact.

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A new device will make quality control of radiotherapy treatments possible

The research team from the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Granada (UGR), together with the Department of Radiology at the Hospital Virgen de las Nieves in Granada, have designed a portable and low-cost device which can measure the ionizing radiation someone is exposed to, for example, during radiotherapy.

Ionizing radiations play a vital role in the treatment and diagnosis of malignant neoplastic illnesses as well as in the diagnosis of other pathologies. However, according to Manuel Vilches Pacheco from the Medical Physics and Radiology Department at the Hospital Virgen de las Nieves in Granada, the potential harm ionizing radiations can cause means that, in order to obtain clinical benefits and reduce the onset of unwanted adverse effects as much as possible, they must be used under strict quality control.

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Radiation Found To Be More Effective Than Surgery At Preventing Second Larynx Cancers In Patients Treated For Early Larynx Cancer

Researchers from Loyola University Medical Center have recently reported on the safety and efficacy of two treatment options commonly recommended to patients with early larynx cancer.

The largest and only study of its kind examined a total of 3898 patients from a NCI sponsored national database who underwent either surgery or radiation. The lead investigator, Dr. Gopal Sachdeva concluded that long term cure rates were equivalent with both of these options. In addition, there was no increased risk of second cancers among patients who received radiation compared to the surgical control. More importantly, surgical management of these patients resulted in a long term statistically significant increased risk of developing a second laryngeal cancer which radiation appears to protect against. This, according to Dr. Sachdeva, "can be explained by a concept called 'field cancerization.'"


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Radiation Kidney Damage In BMT Patients May Be Limited By Drug In Common Use

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee have found that the risk of radiation injury in normal tissue after exposure may be reduced by a drug in common use. Their study in press appears in the online issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics.

It suggests that long-term administration of the drug captopril, starting at three weeks after patients receive total body irradiation in preparation for bone marrow transplantation (BMT), showed a favorable trend for better long-term kidney function and better long-term patient survival. Chronic kidney failure continues to be a major complication in these patients caused by radiation injury.

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Chemotherapy, radiation combo may double lung cancer patients' life expectancy

Washington, Nov 10 (ANI): According to a new study, chemotherapy given at the same time as radiation therapy might help patients with a certain type of lung cancer live longer than they might have otherwise if the same treatment was given differently.

The study, led by Walter Curran Jr., M.D., professor and chair of Radiation Oncology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Centre in Philadelphia, found that the combination may help patients live longer by 50 percent.

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Normal Tissue Not Spared In New Forms Of Breast Cancer Radiotherapy

A five day course of radiotherapy to treat breast cancer may, in some cases, expose as much lung and heart tissue to potentially toxic radiation as does the standard six weeks of treatment, say researchers at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville.

That because the short treatment, known as partial breast irradiation, focus radiation to a small sector of the breast through multiple beams, these beams can pass through the breast to the heart and lungs that lie behind, researchers found. Radiating the entire breast over weeks, as is standard practice, can expose much of the heart and lungs to long periods of lower dose radiation, they say.

Science Daily

Discovery could increase tumors' sensitivity to radiation therapy

St. Louis, Nov. 1, 2007 ¡ª To make tumors more sensitive to the killing power of radiation is a key aspiration for many radiation oncologists. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have uncovered new information that leads them closer to that goal.

In an upcoming issue of the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology, they report the first extensive study of an enzyme called MOF that helps control how DNA is packaged in cells. The researchers show that MOF is an essential factor for tumor development, and they say it may be possible to manipulate the enzyme to make tumors more sensitive to radiation therapy.

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After Surgery High-Risk Prostate Cancer Kept At Bay By Radiation

An analysis of data involving more than 2,000 patients from 17 U.S. institutions demonstrates that men with high-risk prostate cancer who receive radiation therapy after a prostatectomy were less likely to have a recurrence of disease. What's more, men whose cancer persists after surgery were less likely to see the cancer spread if they receive radiation (salvage therapy). These are the conclusions of a study presented at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's 49th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.

"Our analysis gives us a robust picture of the national experience in treating these high-risk prostate cancers," said Eric M. Horwitz, M.D., clinical director of the radiation oncology department at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, and lead author of the study.

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