Prevention and treatment of radiotherapy-induced side effects.

ABSTRACT: Radiotherapy remains a mainstay of cancer treatment, being used in roughly 50% of patients. The precision with which the radiation dose can be delivered is rapidly improving. This precision allows the more accurate targeting of radiation dose to the tumor and reduces the amount of surrounding normal tissue exposed. Although this often reduces the unwanted side effects of radiotherapy, we still need to further improve patients' quality of life and to escalate radiation doses to tumors when necessary. High-precision radiotherapy forces one to choose which organ or functional organ substructures should be spared. To be able to make such choices, we urgently need to better understand the molecular and physiological mechanisms of normal tissue responses to radiotherapy. Currently, oversimplifie

SUBMITTER: Barazzuol L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7332214 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature