Eli5 How does radiation therapy actually work? Like how doesnt it break down more of the body and make the cancer worse or something like that? And does it target only cancer area or everything?

Question

Eli5 How does radiation therapy actually work? Like how doesnt it break down more of the body and make the cancer worse or something like that? And does it target only cancer area or everything?

In: 630

Answer 1

There are some fantastic responses here already, just wanted to add something on:

We are getting much better at targeting radiotherapies to the point where they are usually trained pretty accurately on just the tumour now – the issue is thay unfortunately even when lying completely still, unconcious even, we make small movements through breathing etc.

One project researchers are currently working on is *predicting* these movements and making microscopic adjustments to the targeting to account for them. It’s pretty cooool!

Source: I work in fundraising and Cancer Research UK (largest charitable funder of Cancer Research in the world, second overall) are a client.