Intraoperative Radiation Therapy Essay

I. Intraoperative Radiation therapy: Also known as IORT
II. Problem: Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer for women. It is when there is a lump in the breast that contains cancer cells. Some lumps do not contain cancer cells though. The doctor will have to diagnose someone with breast cancer. Breast cancer is one of the top ten leading causes of death in females. Even males can get breast cancer. At least 200,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. In 2011 40,000 women died of breast cancer. Breast cancer is genetic. That means that if breast cancer runs in your family there is a chance that you could get breast cancer. Breast Cancer surgery takes away part of breast depending on the size and where the tumor is located …show more content…
Breast cancer is being treated by chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy, and surgery. These can all help with the cancer but not killing all of the cells that get left behind after surgery or any of the other treatments. Something that can take the pain away of cancer is titan noni juice. One of my friend’s grandmothers had breast cancer and she took two shots a day of this juice and she said it relieved the pain and tension in her chest that she had. With Intraoperative radiation therapy it can take away all of the cancer cells that get left behind after the surgery. It can also save some of the tissues surrounding the where the tumor site was located. This therapy also helps cut down the amount of times someone goes to the hospital for radiation. Normally someone would have to go to get radiation for weeks. They would have to get it for about five days a week. With intraoperative therapy it is given the day of surgery and only takes about five minutes or a little less of maybe a little more. There was a lot of work that went into making this innovation. For one they had to make sure that intraoperative radiation therapy was not going to kill the person or it would …show more content…
Reflection: Personally, I think that it is a great innovation. I think it could potentially become a daily operation for these patients with early stage breast cancer. I think it could save more lives and help more women in the United States and in the world. It could be very beneficial to find out the people who have early stages of breast cancer so we could use the intraoperative radiation therapy so they could be cured. I believe that they should be looking more into this and putting it into more hospitals with more staff available to be able to perform the surgery and/or the intraoperative radiation therapy. Some people say that it will not be a big thing because how many machines and such we would need, but I think we need to if we can save more people 's life. Especially since breast cancer is a such a big thing in the world. Anything that could help should be used if it works like intraoperative radiation therapy does. Since we spend so much money on other things we could at least spend some money on things that actually matter. We need to have more places where this is offered. We could maybe find a cheaper way to make the machines so it would not be such a money issue. It definitely helps people when they do not have to spend so much time at a hospital five days a week for five to six weeks. The friend’s grandmother lost her life to this horrible disease. Maybe this innovation could have saved her life when she first found out she had breast cancer. Any family