Radiotherapy versus Proton Therapy

Radiotherapy is one of the methods used for cancer treatment and it uses ionizing radiation such as X-Rays to destroy the DNA of the malignant cells. The beams however don’t discriminate between cancerous and normal tissues, and cause serious side effects by destroying the healthy tissues also.

Another problem with X-ray radiotherapy is that once the beams have entered a person’s body, they cause several short-term or long-term side effects. This will particularly harmful to the children whose bodies still in developing phase. There is also a risk of developing cancer again later in life.

Thus, in X-Ray therapy, the doctors need to strike a balance between doses of radiation required to cure from cancer while causing as little damage as possible on the healthy tissues surrounding the tumour.

What is proton therapy?

Proton therapy, which is also a type of radiotherapy, uses protons instead of X-rays to kill the cancel cells. Protons are positively charged tiny-particles, which can be generated and developed as a beam in a controlled way by using large particle accelerators.

These proton beams can kill the cancer cells in the same way as X-rays but there are certain advantages in using proton radiotherapy. When compared to the X-ray radiotherapy, protons are 60% less harmful to the body because they cause less damage to the healthy tissues in front of the tumour and no damage to the healthy tissues lying behind the tumour. It means fewer side-effects.

But there are uncertainties with proton therapy in determination of exactly where the proton beam should stop and not adversely affect the healthy tissues. By using proton CT images, all the errors can be eliminated.