Jump to content

does anyone know about brachytherapy?


LindaMRG

Recommended Posts

Hello Friends,

I emailed my father's onc about his new staging. He is recommending brachytherapy. Ive begun researching it, but just wanted to hear from you what you thought. Thank you so much for your prayers and support, this is such a difficult time for us as his surgery wouldve been today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Linda,

My cousin who is stage 4 mouth/neck and now chest area cancer just had the brachiatherapy done 4 weeks ago @ sloan kettering. It was done in his neck and needless to say it was not successful die only to the fact that the cancer had spread outside the area they did the therapy on. They found out 2 weeks after the therapy that new tumors had now grown on his shoulder and chest area now.

so his therapy did no good but it would have had the cancer not spread. Its a uncomfortable procedure for about a week but I encourage any treatments now.

I hope it works quickly for your dad

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Linda, I don't know about this with lung cancer, but I had brachytherapy for recurrent prostate cancer a year and a half ago and it gave excellent results. I had 55 palladium 102 seeds placed in my prostate. It has a half life of about two weeks, so completely degenerated the radioactivity in about three months. I had no real side effects. Don

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Linda,

I have done a lot of reading up on different treatments while I was looking for the best way to treat my Dad's cancer since he was told he could not have surgery. Brachytherapy seems to be a great, relatively new treatment. Normally the patient is put under and the doctor puts a tube (in this case) down the nasal passage and right into the tumor. At this point, they drop a radioactive seed into the tumor and leave it there for about 15 minutes. Then they remove the seed and the tubes. The patient then has minimal recovery time. Traditional radiation was performed on my Dad when his first tumor was found. Brachytherapy was performed on the second one. For what it is worth, when the final results were in, the traditional radiation did nothing for the first tumor but the second one that had been treated with brachytherapy seemed to be responding very well. As a side note, brachytherapy is given in such a high dosage (but concentrated) that the patient can't be having chemo at the same time (according to our doctor). The effects are too great. Knowing what I know now...I wish we had gone with the brachytherapy from the start.

Good luck,

Kris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.