Brachytherapy is especially applied in gynecologic cancers; provides the effectiveness of the treatment with less harm to surrounding tissues and causing accumulation of high dose at tumor region.It can be applied before or after external treatment and while higher doses are given to a more local region and provides better tumor control, since less doses were given to the surrounding sensitive tissue and normal tissue complication rates decrease.
In Which Cases is Brachytherapy Used?
In standard radiotherapy applications; amount of the dose given to tumor is limited with the tolerance dose of the healthy tissue that the irradiation pass through. This tolerance dose amount is lower than fatal dose of the tumor from time to time and it becomes impossible to get to sufficient doses. In this case, brachytherapy is applied in order to be able to give sufficient dose to tumor. By placing radioactive source directly inside tumor or very close to it, insufficient dose problem for treatment that is originated from tolerance overdose is eliminated. Also, while maximum dose is applied to the tumor region by these radioactive sources that can be placed to organ temporarily or permanently, the dose that the solid tissues exposed around the tumor is very less and by these solid tissues are protected.
In Which Tumor Treatments Brachytherapy is Used?
Brachytherapy is an effective treatment method commonly used in cervix, prostate, breast and skin cancers. Brachytherapy is not limited with the above mentioned regions and can be used for the tumors at the other parts of the body. As an example to these regions, tongue root, mouth floor, lip, bronchus, naso pharynx, esophagus and rectum tumors can be given.
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