Radiation therapists
are responsible for the proper administration of radiation to a patient in an effort to combat a disease. The most common utilization of radiation is against cancer. Radiation therapists have been around for nearly 100 years, but with changes in technology, the success rates of radiation treatments have improved while the side effects to patients have diminished.
Function
A radiation therapist uses ionizing radiation to control malignant cell growth in cancer treatment. They primarily perform radiation therapy on cancer patients who have curable cases, but the treatment can be performed in terminal cases where the aim is disease control or relief from symptoms.
Radiation therapists also use radiation to perform total body irradiation in the case of bone marrow transplants. Other uses include prevention of scar growth and thyroid eyes disease.
Features
Radiation therapists damage the DNA of cells by directing an ionized beam into the atoms of the DNA chain. Breaking the DNA chain is the goal of a radiation therapist. Cancer cells cannot continue growing without DNA strands, but because cell division and repair is so rampant within cancerous tumors, the levels of radiation must be controlled for a particular location and severity.
A radiation therapist uses a linear acceleration machine to deliver the radiation dosage. This generally is accomplished using a two-dimensional beam externally aimed at the target area. Newer models have begun to use three-dimensional beams.
Significance
Radiation therapy has many long- and short-term side effects. The most prevalent side effects are hair loss, swelling and fatigue. Radiation also can create infertility, dryness in the body's glands, and even death.
Radiation therapists combat these side effects by controlling the location and dosage levels of the procedure. The process of fractionation is the best application for supplying radiation therapy. A therapist controls the level and duration of the radiation's impact by spreading the dosages out over a period of time. This can alleviate the severity of the side effects, if not eliminate them entirely.
Types
Radiation therapists are divided into three categories, each providing a different method of treatment. External beam radiotherapy, also known as teletherapy, uses a beam targeted at a specific area of the body in an attempt to radiate the area. The challenge with this is the damage to surrounding tissues. Brachytherapy, or sealed source radiotherapy, injects a sealed radioactive substance with the intention of extraction at a later time, while unsealed source radiotherapy uses radioactive materials that are generally ingested and pass through the body.
History
The first radiation therapists used X-rays as a form of treatment in the 1890s. German physicist Wilhelm Rontgen determined that X-rays provided effective treatment against cancers. Research continued through the next decades, using radium and finally cobalt in the 1940s. It wasn't until the invention of computed tomography (CT) in 1971 by Godfrey Hounsfield that the proper application of radiation therapy could be utilized. Radiation therapists used the invention to identify the exact area of disease and target that area with specific dosages. In the 1980s and 1990s, image-guided radiation therapy was put into practice, giving therapists better tools with which to avoid side effects and improve the outcome of the treatment.
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