Brachytherapy: Radiation Therapy

Brachytherapy
Brachytherapy (also known as internal radiation therapy) is the use of radioactive ‘seeds’ to help destroy cancerous cells. It is commonly used as a treatment for cervical, prostate, breast and skin cancer. How long the treatment will take will depend on where the tumor is and how large it is. Brachytherapy works from the inside of the body by placing the radioactive ‘seeds’ into the body next to the tumor. About 4/10 people with cancer have some type of radiation therapy as their treatment.
History of Brachytherapy
- The earliest use of Brachytherapy was in 1901 at the Curie Institute in Paris by Henri-Alexandre Danlos and at St Lukes and Memorial Hospital in New York by a surgeon called Robert Abbe. It was suggested to Danlos that radioactivity could be used to treat cancer. When Danlos tested this h e found that cancerous tumors shrunk when exposed to radiation.
- In 1970 a machine called an ‘Afterloader’ was developed to stop the doctors from being exposed to
Though Brachytherapy is one half of radiation therapy, its other half is known as External Beam Radiation Therapy (EBRT). EBRT, just like Brachytherapy, involves radiation entering the body to remove tumorous cells. EBRT uses accurately targeted beams that enter the body from a machine called the linear accelerator. Patients would or lie down on a couch or bed at the hospital and receive the therapy. With Brachytherapy radiated seeds are planted in the body rather than separate doses. EBRT, which uses X-ray radiation, makes its radiation by bombarding a high atomic number material with electrons. If that target is removed an electron beam with high energy is formed. Instead with Brachytherapy the radiation is placed within Radon seeds which are tiny, usually gold containers. They are 4.5mm long and are 0.8mm in width. Both treatments come from the radiation therapy category and are both very commonly used to treat cancer