Cancer 'Cold Spots' Minimize Radiotherapy Effects | Radiology
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Radiology Cancer 'Cold Spots' Minimize Radiotherapy Effects

Cancer 'Cold Spots' Minimize Radiotherapy Effects

Radiology News - Radiology
Refining radiotherapy to monitor the faster growing parts of a patient's tumor could improve the regulation of cancer while helping patients to lower doses of radiation. 

The 2nd European Lung Cancer Conference presented a study by Dutch researchers about minimising the side-effects in radiotherapy. It is a major concern,according to lead researcher Dr Christian Siedschlag from the Dutch Cancer Institute. 

In order to kill all tumor cells with adequate dosage without any complications, absolute care in adminstration of the dosage is necessary. Thus, the Dutch researchers studied to find if it was possible to avoid elimination of some areas in a tumor, thereby reducing the overall dose and lessen the ill-effects while achieving the same healing effect.

A device called FDG PET was used in the process, this is a form of positron emission tomography scanning. The PET scans calculate the glucose metabolism of a tumor by injecting 'radioactive sugar' and measuring where the radioactivity (and hence the sugar) is absorbed in the body. Tumors have an increased metabolism compared to normal tissue, which makes them show up well on PET scans. In most cases, lung tumors are visible on PET scans as a bright sphere, with the highest intensity in the centre.

At the ELCC meeting, the group concluded, that, the initial outcomes in maximum cases of the cold spots consist of dead tumor cells. In 7 out of 61 patients they saw cold spots on PET scans. Surgical diagnosis in five cases revealed that these spots were in fact dead cells.

"By decreasing the doses given to the cold spots, one might be able to increase the dose given to the rest of the tumor, while keeping the normal tissue dose constant. Or one could keep the dose given to the rest of the tumor constant, which would lead to less side-effects with an identical therapeutic result."

Source: European Society for Medical Oncology

 

 

Tags: radiology
 

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