Articles on medical technology: robotic surgery, advanced imaging, radiotherapy systems and other equipment, explained by what each actually changes for the patient rather than by brand names.
The main disadvantages of proton beam therapy are cost, limited availability, and a thinner evidence base than conventional radiation. Protons still cause side effects…
There is no single success rate for radiation therapy, because results depend on the cancer type, its stage, and whether the goal is cure,…
Family members can safely live with, hug, and care for someone having chemotherapy. The drugs are not radioactive and do not spread by touch…
The main types of immunotherapy are checkpoint inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, CAR T-cell and other adoptive cell therapies, cytokines, oncolytic viruses, treatment vaccines, and locally…
Intrathecal chemotherapy is chemotherapy injected directly into the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord, usually through a lumbar puncture or a…
Chemotherapy has three time scales. A single session can take anywhere from a few minutes for an injection to several hours for an intravenous…
Chemotherapy for stage 4 cancer is usually given to control the disease rather than cure it: to shrink or slow tumors that have spread,…
Radiation therapy itself is not painful: the beam cannot be felt, much like having an X-ray, and each session lasts only minutes. Discomfort, when…
Hair growth after chemotherapy usually begins within a few weeks of the final treatment, starting as soft fuzz and reaching roughly an inch or…
Chemotherapy for metastatic cancer is medicine that travels through the bloodstream to reach cancer cells wherever they have spread. For most metastatic cancers it…
Chemotherapy hair loss happens because many chemotherapy medicines target fast-dividing cells, and the cells in hair follicles divide quickly. Shedding usually starts two to…
Chemotherapy is usually grouped in three ways: by goal (curative, adjuvant or neoadjuvant to support surgery, and palliative to control symptoms and slow growth),…
Chemotherapy and radiation are different tools for the same job. Chemotherapy uses medicines that travel through the bloodstream to reach cancer cells anywhere in…
Immunotherapy cost has no single figure because the bill is driven by which drug class is used, how many treatment cycles you receive, whether…
A bone marrow transplant, also called a stem cell transplant, replaces damaged or destroyed blood-forming stem cells with healthy ones from your own body…
A chemotherapy port is a small device, roughly the size of a quarter, placed under the skin of the upper chest and connected by…
External beam radiation therapy directs precisely shaped, high-energy beams from a machine outside the body at a tumor to damage cancer-cell DNA. It is…
Immunotherapy rarely announces itself with a feeling. The clearest signs it is working come from imaging that shows tumors shrinking or holding steady, tumor-marker…
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