Essay On Radiation Therapy

Today’s morning one of the most wide-spread diseases is cancer. It is a complex of related similar diseases. In all of its types, some special cells start dividing without a pause in an enormous amount and spread into surrounding tissues. This way, cancer cells become invasive. However, there are several ways to treat it and radioactivity is one of them. Around 500 000 patients benefit from radiation therapy produced by only Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization each year, which means it serves as an effective way to get rid of cancer cells. On the other side, as everything has its own negative aspects, radiation therapy also has some disadvantages like killing the healthy cells and causing second cancer. For this reason, in my research I am going to answer the question if it’s worth using radiation therapy in cancer treatment – or no. First of all, it’s necessary to look how the radiation therapy works. There are two ways of radiation treatment:

The high-energetic radioactive ways used in treatment break the nuclear of DNA of cancer cells, which means damages the genetic materials and destroy their ability of reproducing. When cell stops reproducing, it cannot be spread around anymore. Moreover, comparing to other treatments like chemotherapy, radiotherapy is considered as most precise local treatment as it can be used in area of human where cancer cells are spread. For example, it is possible to use radiation to area of eyes, nose, ears, mouth, etc. Due to statistics, between 1987-1995 the study of Michel Bolla and Dionisio Gonzalez showed, that 48% of 415 patients who received radiation therapy achieved overall survival. Because this was in previous century and now the technologies and medicine are developed better, we conclude that the use of radiotherapy is effective