Two commonly used radiotherapy methods for pancreatic cancer patients

Radiotherapy for pancreatic cancer patients can be divided into radical radiotherapy and palliative radiotherapy. Radical radiotherapy means eliminating local tumors, achieving lasting local regional control, and enabling patients to survive for a long time. This concept is the same as radical surgery, except that the treatment methods are different. The purpose of palliative radiotherapy is to relieve the patient's pain and appropriately prolong the patient's survival time. During palliative radiotherapy, the irradiation range is relatively small and may not include the entire tumor, but only those parts that produce symptoms, such as those that cause obstruction or compression symptoms.

When patients undergo radical treatment, because the tumor must be regressed and tumor cells in the surrounding area must be eliminated, the radiation dose is large and the range of radiation is wide, which causes great damage to normal tissues. When patients choose radical radiotherapy, they should ask the doctor to accurately locate the tumor tissue and try to avoid damaging healthy cells.

The treatment methods for patients who choose palliative treatment and palliative surgery are basically the same. The radiation dose is generally low, so only relatively simple radiation techniques are required. Its function is to relieve some local symptoms caused by tumors through radiotherapy. For example, pain and bleeding caused by cancer viruses. Due to the location of the pancreas, pancreatic cancer patients generally choose palliative radiotherapy during radiotherapy because the pancreas is in a special location and there are many organs around it.