How Does Radiation Therapy Work For Brain Tumor

When cancer has spread to the brain from elsewhere in the body it is called a secondary brain tumour or a brain metastasis.

How does radiation therapy work for brain tumor. There s a reason radiation therapy is one of the main ways doctors treat metastatic brain tumors today it works. Radiation therapy most often uses x rays but protons or other types of energy also can be used. Learn the types of therapy cancers each treats and side effects. The term radiation therapy most often refers to external beam radiation therapy.

Radiotherapy is a common treatment for secondary brain tumours. About radiation therapy to the brain. Radiation therapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses beams of intense energy to kill cancer cells. Cancer growing inside the brain increases pressure inside the skull.

Radiation therapy also affects normal cells. This can cause symptoms such as. Cancer that spreads to the brain is usually treated with radiosurgery highly focused radiation with a tool such as the gamma knife followed by less intense radiation to the whole brain. Lim says radiation therapy has been shown to be as effective as surgery in several studies and it could even reduce your chances of a tumor recurrence the tumor.

It works by damaging the cancer cells and making it hard for them to reproduce. A cancer diagnosis may mean radiation therapy. Your body then is naturally able to get rid of these damaged cancer cells.