What is radiotherapy treatment?

As x-Rays have been discovered almost 10 years ago and these are being used in medical science. These are used for the diagnosis purpose as well as for the treatment such as radiotherapy. There are two types of radiotherapy,

1. External radiotherapy

2. Internal radiotherapy

External radiotherapy is for external body and internal radiotherapy is used for internal body parts. Radiotherapy is actually used to distroye cancel cells but it may damage normal cells as well. But fortunately normal cells can repair themselves later on.


How Radiotherapy do its work:

Radiotherapy treatments works by destroying DNA of cancer cells so that they wont be able to reproduce which cause reducing tumours. Radiotherapy treatment is used in following reasons,

•     To destroy the tumour – this may include radiotherapy on its own or combined with other treatments such as surgery or chemotherapy. If the aim is to cure your cancer with radiotherapy, this is known as primary therapy or radical radiotherapy.
•     To reduce the size of a tumour before surgery. This is called neo-adjuvant treatment.
•     To make sure all the cancer cells are destroyed after surgery. This is called adjuvant treatment.
•     In the emergency treatment of a cancer pressing on your spinal cord to reduce the size of the cancer and prevent damage to your nerves.
•     In advanced cancer to slow down the progress of the disease, relieve pain and other symptoms. This is called palliative treatment.