Advantages of Heavy Ion Therapy
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- Superior Dose Localization
- Heavy ion therapy can severely damage the tumor while minimizing damage to surrounding tissues. Heavy ion therapy has less toxicity (adverse effects) than conventional radiotherapy.
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- Effective Against Cancers Which are Resistant to Conventional Radiations
- Heavy ion beams have stronger biological effects than X-ray. For example, heavy ion therapy is more effective against tumors such as osteosarcoma, which are difficult to cure with conventional X-ray radiotherapy.
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- Short Treatment Time
- The treatment time for heavy-ion radiotherapy is relatively short (3 weeks on average). Compared to conventional X-ray radiotherapy, which requires 6-7 weeks, the treatment time can be reduced dramatically.
Comparison with orher therapies
| Surgery | |
|---|---|
| Indications | ・Localized Cancer (mainly early-stage diseases) |
| Advantage | ・Considered more likely to be curative. |
| Disadvantage | ・Relatively large deprivation of organ function and morphology ・Indication for surgery can be limited due to location of cancer and conditions of patients (age, concomitant diseases, etc) |
| Particle/Radiation Therapy | |
|---|---|
| Indications | ・Localized Cancer (from early-stage to advanced-stage diseases) |
| Advantage | ・Relatively smaller damage to organ function and morphology.
・Relatively smaller damage to the patient. ・The treatment results for early-stage cancer in selected sites are equivalent to those of surgery. |
| Disadvantage | ・The financial cost for particle therapy is more expensive compared to other therapies. ・Adverse effects can occur in organs near the tumors. |
| Chemotherapy | |
|---|---|
| Indications | ・Systemic cancer (Cancer with metastasis & hematological cancer such as leukemia) ・Used in combination with other therapies for localized cancer |
| Advantage | ・Can sometimes prolong patients’ lives by suppressing the progression of cancer. |
| Disadvantage | ・Can cause systemic adverse effects. |