Radiation Therapy Advances Improve Quality of Life for GI Cancer

Radiation therapy can be an intimidating concept for patients facing a new cancer diagnosis, particularly for those with gastrointestinal cancers. According to Dr. Rachit Kumar, many patients arrive at the clinic expecting to face severe radiation burns, debilitating side effects and long-term toxicity — concerns rooted in older approaches to treatment.

In an interview with CURE, Kumar discussed the evolution of radiation therapy and how advancements in technology have allowed for more precise targeting of tumors.

Kumar explained that radiation therapy has moved far beyond simply pointing a beam at the cancer and accepting collateral damage. Now, tools such as intensity modulated radiation, stereotactic radiation and proton therapy allow physicians to shape and guide radiation in a way that avoids normal tissues and improves patients’ quality of life. These innovations have made it possible to measure exactly how much radiation healthy tissues receive, offering patients more assurance and fewer side effects.

Although there is no “free lunch” when it comes to radiation treatment, Kumar emphasized that the experience today is vastly different from what many patients expect, helping to ease fears and improve outcomes.

Kumar is an assistant professor of radiation oncology and molecular radiation sciences at The John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Transcript:

That's a really key thing that we hear a lot from patients. Radiation is a scary word, and I think that when you're dealing with a new diagnosis of cancer, which is already something scary, to come into our office and to think about the past and patients getting severe radiation burns, severe radiation toxicity, debilitating side effects, that's what a lot of people come in and, frankly, expect. What is very helpful for us is to be able to tell patients that although there is no “free lunch” with this process, there is no walk in the park that goes through, we know that our technology has gone from basically pointing a beam of radiation on a patient and accepting that there's going to be collateral damage throughout that area.

Now we can say much more comfortably that what we're seeing is the ability to shape radiation, to avoid normal tissues, to actually measure in detail how much [radiation] normal tissues are receiving, and to use the most advanced technology to push radiation away from those normal tissues and really concentrate on the target tissue is leading to a lot better quality of life. So, technologies such as intensity modulated radiation, stereotactic radiation, proton therapy, all of these are different things that we can say with very high confidence have drastically improved the quality of life of patients going through gastrointestinal cancer radiation.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.