This approach has great potential to sharpen the cancer-fighting ability of external-beam radiation while reducing the damage to nearby tissue. In fact, some doctors believe three-dimensional conformal therapy will eclipse other radiation treatments for prostate cancer before the end of the century.
Little more than a decade ago, the idea here—zeroing in on the prostate more accurately and completely, but leaving surrounding tissue little the worse for wear—would have seemed like a nice daydream to most radiation oncologists. But over the last several years, great technological strides have made 3-D conformal therapy seem, suddenly, not only achievable but highly promising.
This therapy developed because scientists looked at what was not happening with radiation treatment: Conventional approaches, studies found, weren’t precise enough. For one thing, they weren’t accurately estimating the volume of their target; and because of this, they often didn’t supply enough radiation to kill the whole tumor. What was happening in some men, researchers have learned, was like what happens when a speaker with an inadequate microphone tries to make himself understood to an audience of a hundred thousand people in a vast amphitheater—some, maybe even most of the crowd can hear him, but that still leaves hundreds or even thousands who aren’t getting his message. In traditional radiation treatment for prostate cancer, this inadequate coverage meant that many men who suffered local relapses of prostate cancer did so because they were underdosed.
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