Using Proton Therapy to Help the Youngest Patients
Although treating cancer with a lower risk of side effects is a priority for every patient, it's especially important when treating cancer in children. That's why, for many patients with pediatric cancer, proton therapy holds unique promise.
While proton therapy is best known for its potential in treating tumors in the prostate, cancer in children is also successfully treated with protons – for many of the same reasons.
How Proton Therapy Effectively Treats Pediatric Cancer
Generally, childhood cancers are treated with traditional radiation, chemotherapy or surgery – or a combination of the three. And while traditional radiation can go a long way in defeating pediatric cancers, it can also result in harmful side effects for growing children. These risks include developmental delays, effects on bone and muscle tissue, and hearing loss or damage to salivary glands when pediatric cancers are located in the head or neck.
Because they can be so precisely controlled, the beams used in proton therapy are ideal for treating lesions and soft tissue tumors that may be located near growing tissues in the spinal cord and brain, eyes, ears or mouth. Healthy tissues surrounding the pediatric cancer are spared from excess radiation, meaning physicians can deliver more potent doses of proton radiation directly to the child's tumor.
With proton therapy, oncologists can treat childhood cancer, or pediatric cancer, with less damage to healthy, growing tissues.
Pediatric cancers treated with proton therapy include:
- rhabdomyosarcomas
- non-rhabdo soft tissue sarcomas
- Ewing's sarcoma
- medulloblastomas
- ependymoma
- germ cell tumors in the brain
- neuroblastoma
- retinoblastoma
To learn more about other benefits of treating cancer of the prostate, cancer in children, and other types of cancer with proton therapy, visit the About Proton Therapy and The Benefits of Proton Therapy sections of our site.
