Today’s medicine is using 3 major ways to treat the cancer. Operation, pharmacotherapy (chemotherapy) and radiotherapy (irradiation). Radiotherapy is the most economical treatment method with relatively high healing effect. In developed countries, it is currently used in 50-60% of oncology patients and the number is still growing. Of these, about one-third of cancer patients are treated separately with radiotherapy, and nearly two thirds of patients are treated with radiotherapy in combination with surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy or biological targeted therapy.
Today’s radiotherapy uses mainly photon or proton irradiation.
Proton is intelligent and seeks its target. It distinguishes between tissues and the tumour. It can protect organs needed to live fully. Unlike photons, which disregard everything when travelling through the body and damage anything in their way. These are key differences.
You cannot change physics, but you can use and master its principles. And that is what proton therapy does.
If you were diagnosed for radiotherapy, ask for the safest option – proton therapy!
Proton therapy involves the use of protons, i.e. positively charged elementary particles in the nucleus of hydrogen atoms, which are accelerated in a cyclotron to about half the speed of light. This gives them energy capable of destroying tumours at a depth of up to 30 centimetres.
Protons are then directed into a very narrow beam (PBS) by a strong magnetic field and transferred to the tumour with a high degree of accuracy. As they brake in the tumour tissue, their energy is released, ionization occurs and the DNA of the affected cell is damaged. Once damaged, the cancer cell loses its ability to divide and grow, or otherwise dies immediately.
The main benefit of the proton beam is that the biggest portion of its energy is deposited directly inside the tumour, where maximum effect is achieved. It is called “the Bragg peak” – the proton only irradiates the tumour, not the area behind it, and only very little of the area in front is irradiated. Since the patient is irradiated from all directions and the beam intensity can be easily modulated, it contributes to a further reduction of the treatment’s adverse effects.
Thanks to the Bragg peak – low input dose, maximum energy dose at the required depth and zero output dose – it is possible to increase the radiation dose in the tumour above the level of conventional methods and, on the contrary, to reduce the dose affecting the surrounding tissue, not affected by cancer. This is one of the greatest benefits of proton therapy.