Chemotherapy

Beam chemotherapy, radiation is the cure

Chemotherapy has revolutionized the way the cancer patients are treated. There are certain variants of this mode of treatment and one of them is Beam chemotherapy. BEAM regimen as it is called in clinical terms, is a variant of chemotherapy that is administered before giving ASCT to a cancer patient suffering from malignant lymphoma. It can be considered as a form of combination chemotherapy.

In some of the cases, the Beam chemotherapy is reported to have cured lymphoma completely. But in some other instances, the non-Hodgkin lymphoma has reappeared. If this is the case, then the treatment can be applied to get relief. If curing the ailment completely is not possible, the treatment can still make the lymph nodes contract and hence keep the disease at bay for a long period. Depending upon the severity of the swell of the affected cells, radiotherapy, chemotherapy or their combination may be administered. Sometimes, a stem cell transplant can prove to be beneficial.

A type of Beam chemotherapy called EBRT or External beam radiation therapy is extensively used to treat patients with advanced or localized prostrate cancer. In the last two decades, the employment of advanced medical instruments has made this way of treatment extremely desirable. Its origin however dates back to the early days of the 20th century. For treating cases of prostrate cancer, Radiation therapy was introduced in the USA for the first time in 1915. In the initial stage, a device called radium applicator was employed.

In the following 3 decades, the variant of Beam chemotherapy called EBRT was used widely. However, due to the lack of efficiency of the early devices, the treatments resulted in skin morbidity. The technological drawbacks of the low energy x-ray beams acted as a hindrance to the employment of radiotherapy in treating cases of prostrate cancer. However, after the Second World War took place, some breakthroughs were achieved in the spheres of radiotherapy. Megavoltage radiation was invented, resulting in x-ray beams with greater penetration power.

The use of powerful radiation beams in the field of oncology has given birth to the method of cancer treatment called Beam chemotherapy. It became the preferred way of treating cases of prostrate cancer. The work of some researchers like Malcolm Bagshaw at the coveted Stanford University deserves a mention here. The majority of the cancer cases in men in the USA are prostrate cancer. Even though the ailment has a higher mortality rate, the doctors have been able to diminish it to some extent in the recent years.

EBRT is generally employed to teat cancer patients who have a possibility of contracting diseases not specific to any organ. This mode of Beam chemotherapy gives patients detected with T3 or stage C ailment, a disease free survival chance of 5 years. However, for long term disease free survival rates, the ratio of success diminishes.