Adrenal cancer treatment with radiotherapy

Radiotherapy helps destroy the cancerous cells' DNA and, as a result, prevents the tumor from further growth and development. The main force that damages these cells are ionizing exposure. Radiation therapy can rarely become the primary treatment for adrenal cancer because most cancers of adrenal glands aren't responsive enough to ionizing exposure. Yet, it shows excellent efficiency as a part of adjuvant therapy that helps to prevent relapses. To understand if the patient will have sufficient results after radiotherapy, doctors often might need to run additional diagnostic tests. The treatment plan for the patient is built based on the data from CT or MRI scans that are being processed via 3D radiation planning software. Radiation therapy might often be mixed up with other methods of adrenal cancer treatment and might help to shrink the tumor and make it possible to conduct surgery. During a treatment session, the patient must remain without a single movement on the table while the radiotherapy apparatus moves around him. Usually, a single treatment session takes up to one minute. It depends on the tumor’s size, type, number of cancerous lesions, and grade. In most cases, patients undergo treatment sessions daily or have a rest day between procedures. A single course of radiation therapy takes up to 20-40 treatment sessions.