Cancer Informative Speech

Before a whole new spectrum of knowledge is introduced to your brain, we must take a ride on the basic health train. This will give you a better understanding of the upcoming topic of new technologies being introduced to the health care system, more specifically, in pediatric cancer. One of the most common childhood cancer is leukemia. Leukemia affects white blood cells, which fight infections and protects your body from diseases. This type of cancer affects more than 3,500 children in the United States every year. But luckily, there are a limited variety of cancer treatments, which include chemotherapy, stem cell transplant, and radiation therapy. Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancer cell. While radiation therapy is used when leukemia has

Radiation therapy simply uses high-energy particles or waves, such as x-rays, gamma rays, electron beams, or protons, to destroy or damage cancer cells. Other names for radiation therapy are radiotherapy, irradiation, or x-ray therapy. A little background on cells in the body; they grow and divide to form new cells. But cancer cells grow and divide faster than many of the normal cells around them. Radiation works by making small breaks in the DNA inside cells. These breaks keep cancer cells from growing and dividing, and often cause them to

It utilizes computerized optimization programs to generate treatment plans, reducing the volume of normal tissues irradiated. The radiation oncologist chooses the radiation doses to different areas of the tumor and surrounding tissue, and then a high-powered computer program calculates the required number of beams and angles of the radiation treatment. IMRT has been shown to safely intensify the radiation dose to the tumor, thereby increasing the probability of eliminating the tumor. Simultaneously, the radiation dose to surrounding normal tissues is minimized, thereby diminishing the side effects of radiation both during and after treatment. The IMRT system can achieve different goals according to the individual needs of the patient. The tumor dose can be maintained at the standard level while dramatically reducing exposure to the specific sensitive areas surrounding normal tissues, as well as increasing radiation dose to area that need it. IMRT provides a significantly better chance of surviving free from both cancer and the morbidity of the