What is proton therapy?

Proton therapy is a medical treatment that sends a beam of protons to the body to destroy infected tissue, usually cancer tissue. It uses ionizing radiation and particle accelerator to direct the proton beam to a cancer tumor. This helps to better protect the nearby healthy tissue in cancer destruction, most often brain cancer, eyes, spine, lung, head, neck or prostate. Cancer treatment remains its main use at the beginning of the 21st century, but proton therapy is also studied for its potential contribution to the treatment of such health conditions as macular degeneration. Many cells have the ability to repair damaged DNA. Cancer cells are reproduced so quickly that they are less able to make these repairs before defective genes are handed over or simply die before damaged cells.

6 First, due to the nature of the energy protons, proton therapeutic radiation can be administered in larger doses. Protons can only go into the body according to the amount of energy they have. Sending outThe amount of radiation for tumor work, because the protons are too localized to cause large damage to the surrounding cells. Other types of radiation must be administered at lower work because they cannot be checked as proton therapy can.

Second, radiation can be administered at a normal dose, but in the narrower beam, so it is unlikely to harm neighboring tissues and organs. Sometimes the insufficient dose of treatment is not afraid of a doctor as well as the potential for treatment to damage other cells. The ability to narrow the current to microbeam protons focused on a particular area, doctors can minimize damage elsewhere.

There are different types of proton therapy, of which doctors can choose the most effective for a particular type of cancer. Each type of therapy of charged particles works similarly, but with differences in charged protons and used materials. Bor neutron therapy is the therapy that was tested at the beginning of 2011. It includes the boor to be injected into a tumor and then shot a beam neutrthose. Neutrons cause the boron atom to divide and completely destroy the cell with almost no effect on nearby cells and healthy tissues. Fast-Neutron therapy works in a similar way, but uses injected berylium as a target instead of boron.