Source: WISH-TV / WISH-TV
STATEWIDE — Some cancers cannot be remedied by normal radiation treatments, so doctors have had to get creative to figure out ways to get at these cancers.
More than 200,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor each year.
But, when a person gets lung cancer, for example, it can spread to other parts of the body like the brain. Dr. Matthew Shepard with the Allegheny Health Network says when that happens it’s easier to use radiation and chemotherapy on the cancerous tissue in the lungs, but the brain is much harder.
Since normal radiation is less effective in certain parts of the brain, Shepard says they have come up with a way around it by using little pads with radiation seeds that are implanted in the brain near the cancerous cells.
“We implant the little tiles that that radiation seeds that emit a low dose of radiation over several weeks to months,” he said on WISH-TV. “You set it and forget it. You set the radiation therapy in and you don’t have to come back to the hospital.”
He said the tiles, which are the size of a postage stamp, dissolve over time so a second surgery is not needed to take them out once the cancer has subsided.
