According to the American Cancer Society, cancer treatment by radiation was performed only a few years after x-rays were discovered by a German physics professor in the late 1800s. Since the early 1900s, new advances in radiation therapy have enabled us at Delaware Radiation to bring patients state of the art treatment for their cancers. While the equipment we use to provide radiation oncology in Delaware, Ohio, is complicated, the battle against cancer starts with a single human cell.
Cell Replication
The cells in the human body duplicate themselves by dividing and sharing materials. This process goes through various phases. One of the most important steps is the duplication of chromosomes which carry the DNA that tells the cell how to grow and reproduce. Duplicating the DNA insures that an identical copy of the cell is created. When cells aren’t actively making copies of themselves, they go through different stages of resting.
What Makes Radiation Effective Against Cancer Cells
There are two key factors that allow radiation therapy to be an effective treatment against cancer:
- High doses of radiation damages the DNA in the cell. This prevents the cell from dividing and growing. Eventually, these cells stop functioning and die.
- Cancer cells tend to grow and divide faster than other cells around it. A tumor is a collection of these rapidly growing cells. Radiation works quickly against the fast-growing cells and more slowly on those that are just resting.
During a treatment, radiation is focused on the cancerous cells of a tumor so that they get the most radiation. By targeting these cells, little damage occurs to the non-cancerous cells surrounding the tumor.
It Takes Time for the Cancer Cells to Die
Some of the cancerous cells may die right away during a treatment, but a number of them take a few days, or weeks, to completely go away. With the disruption of the DNA, the cells don’t know how to grow or divide, but they may continue to survive for awhile. Eventually, the affected cells stop functioning and get absorbed by the body.
Radiation Therapy Has a More Localized Effect on Cells
Chemotherapy has a similar result, but the entire body is exposed to the cancer-fighting drugs. Radiation treatments are designed to target just the cancer cells and fewer healthy cells. The goal in any treatment is to affect as many cancerous cells as possible while leaving the healthy cells unaffected.
The two ways that radiation therapy achieves this is by:
- Masking the body off around the area where the cancer resides leaving a small space for the radiation to get through just to the cancerous cells
- Having a patient swallow a radioactive material that travels through the body and collects within the cancerous cells
By focusing on just the cancer cells, other healthy cells remain untouched.
Advances in radiation therapy provide a non-invasive treatment approach for a variety of types of cancer. As our practice of radiation oncology evolves, we are able to more effectively target the malignant cancer cells giving patients a chance to live a healthy life.
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