When a person is going through radiation therapy for cancer treatment, a nasty side effect is often skin toxicity. This can include burns, dry cracking skin, or other uncomfortable skin issues. If the skin toxicity remains fairly mild, then there may not be a problem. But, if the problems get bad, they can have a severe impact on the quality of life and could even bring a woman to the point that she must discontinue treatment.
Interestingly, researchers in Italy discovered that a glass of wine every day could actually help minimize the skin toxicity of radiotherapy. They examined 348 women …read more

Lung cancer is most often difficult to treat. Not only because it cannot be detected early enough but also because most lung cancer tumors aren’t that responsive to treatment.
Therefore scientists are always looking for the good if not the best treatment combination for lung cancer.
One example is the new mice study from UT Southwestern Medical Center:
Combining radiation therapy with a drug that helps destroy blood vessels nourishing malignant tumors has been shown in mice to be significantly more effective in treating lung cancer than either approach alone.
The said drug is bavituximab – a drug which Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc. has exclusively …read more

Wake Forest University School of Medicine researchers found out that radiation therapy after lumpectomy (breast-conserving surgery) and five years of treatment with the drug tamoxifen can dramatically reduce the risk of both cancer recurrence and new tumors in older women with early breast cancer.
According to lead author Ann M. Geiger, M.P.H., Ph.D., an associate professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest and formerly of Kaiser Permanente Southern California:
“While these treatments are standard care for younger patients, it is has been shown that older women are less likely to receive them. Our results provide strong evidence of the importance of …read more

Fox Chase Cancer Center suggests that men with prostate cancer who choose radiation therapy should seek treatment centers that will offer high-dose radiation because their new study findings revealed that higher doses of 74 to 82 Gray (Gy) greatly reduce the risk that the cancer will spread later (even 8-10 years) after treatment.
Such findings were presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology in Philadelphia.
Peter Morgan, M.D., a resident in the Radiation Oncology Department at Fox Chase Cancer Center, explains:
“There is a comprehensive body of evidence demonstrating that prostate cancer treated with higher …read more

Administering less radiation than usual is just as effective against a benign but potential devastating brain tumor called an acoustic schwannoma and might save more of the patient’s hearing.
Such were the recent findings of radiation oncologists at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.
Acoustic schwannoma is a slow-growing tumor that develops in the vestibular nerve that lies very close to the auditory or hearing nerve.
Acoustic schwannoma’s most common symptom is hearing loss so that when left untreated could lead to severe hearing loss. The only way to remove this tumor is by …read more

Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have associated smoking and acute side-effects following radiation therapy for prostate cancer, kind-a validating the previous findings that smoking contributes to poorer outcomes for people treated for many kinds of cancer.In their study, the Fox Chase researchers analyzed the impact of smoking on gastrointestinal (GI) and genitourinary (GU) side effects for 1,194 patients with prostate cancer treated at Fox Chase Cancer Center with 3D conformal radiation therapy between 1991 and 2001.
Smoking is associated with an increased risk of radiation-related side effects in cancers of the head and neck, cervix, lung and breast.
The Fox …read more

According to a new study appearing in the September 1 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the modern three-dimensional radiation therapy proved to be more successful in curing lung cancer as compared to the older two-dimensional radiation therapy in some patients with early stage lung cancer.
87% of all lung cancer diagnosed is non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), whose current best treatment for stage 1 is surgery or stereotactic radiation therapy (SRT), usually followed by chemotherapy (if lesion was larger than 3 cm) or radiotherapy and chemotherapy (if surgical margin or hilar or mediastinal nodes were positive at the …read more