Question

Brachytherapy VS external beam radiotherapy:

1. what are the physical principles behind and how they affect its use within the medical setting?
2. How they are used in a clinical setting and how they may be used in the future?

Answer 1

Brachytherapy is the treatment of cancers such as cancer of cervix, breast oesophageal and skin but especially prostate cancer.This can be done through the insertion of radioactive implants directly into the tissues of the particular parts.This allows radiation only to the localized cells that are affected.

Principle: Conformal radiotherapy is the principle of brachytherapy.This principle mainly deals with the supply of large amount of radiation to the affected cells and decrease the dose to the adjacent organs and their tissues to reduce the damage.

This therapy used in the clinical setting sends some radiation sources in to the tumor cells that makes the cell to shrink and kills.

Future use: Brachytherapy can be customized and designed according to the needs of the patients and also treat wide range of cancer cells.

External beam radiation is the most common type of radiation therapy that is used in which high beam rays were sent directly into the tumors.

Principle : This also uses the same principle of brachytherapy that is conformal radiation.But this uses scan images of particular parts to identify and reach the treatment area with the help of machines.

This treatment relieves the symptoms of cancer in the hospitals through out patient settings by using high energy radiant in multiple aspects to kill the cancer.

Future use : Images taken through scans will detect the data and cloud computing about the doses required for the particular area in multiple aspects which promotes best practices.