Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy delivers high doses of radiation to specific areas of the body to treat cancer. It is used to destroy cancer cells and shrink tumors. It is also used to relieve pain and other cancer symptoms to help improve your quality of life and address other problems caused by tumors, such as difficulty breathing.

Is Radiation Therapy Right for Me?

Our radiation oncology team customizes your radiation therapy plan to meet your needs and assure your safety. The following factors determine whether radiation therapy will benefit you:

The type of cancer
The size of the tumor
Whether the cancer is limited to a small area (localized) or spread (metastasized)
Where in your body the cancer is located
How close the cancer is to vital organs and sensitive tissues
Your age, current health and health history
Whether you will have other types of cancer treatment, such as chemotherapy or surgery
Your personal wishes

Types of Radiation Therapy at RUSH

External beam radiation therapy is delivered by advanced linear accelerator that moves around your body without touching you. It aims radiation at the cancer, not the whole body — which helps protect healthy tissue. This therapy is given daily in a matter of minutes, with the specific number of treatments varying. This type of radiation therapy includes the following:
- 3D conformal radiation therapy, using specialized imaging to plan radiation to match the tumor in three dimensions.
- Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), using intensity-modulated beams from multiple directions to deliver higher doses of radiation to specific regions within the tumor.
- Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), using a single high dose of radiation to treat functional abnormalities and small well-defined tumors of the brain.
- Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), targeting small, well-defined tumors anywhere in the body.
- Total body irradiation, treating hematologic cancers that have spread throughout the body.
- Total skin electron irradiation, delivering radiation to the entire skin surface while sparing internal organs.
Internal radiation therapy places the radiation source directly inside the body at the site of the cancer, rather than delivering radiation through the skin. This includes the following:
- Brachytherapy, radioactive seeds or wires placed at the site of the cancer.
- Intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) for breast cancer, a one-time concentrated radiation treatment given during a lumpectomy to target the area of the breast most at risk for recurrence while sparing healthy tissue and organs.
Specialized procedures and techniques that include the following:
- Respiratory gating, to synchronize radiation therapy with a patient’s breathing.
- Prone breast irradiation, to give heart and lungs less exposure to radiation during treatment, the patient lies on stomach.
- Accelerated breast irradiation, whole or partial breast treatment in as little as one-week duration.
- Deep inspiration breath hold, to minimize the amount of radiation exposure to the heart and lungs during treatment.
- Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT), to deliver a higher dose of radiation more precisely to the tumor, the radiation team images the tumor before every treatment.