Recent developments in radiation oncology have made radiotherapy for pancreatic cancer more effective and easier on the body. In a recent “Hope and Healing” UF Health Blog, Radiation Oncology Assistant Professor Kathryn Hitchcock, MD, PhD, discusses the most up-to-date technologies available to try to change the challenging pancreatic cancer statistics.
Scientific studies over many years have looked at improving rates of successful surgical removal of cancers of the pancreas. One approach is to use radiation and chemotherapy before the operation to shrink the tumor and “clean up” stray cancer cells that have moved into the normal tissue around the main tumor mass. This is called neoadjuvant therapy, and is especially important when the tumor can’t be removed at the time of discovery because it is too entwined with vital parts of the body. Sometimes surgery cannot be done at all, and in that case radiation and chemotherapy become the main treatments.
Read the entire article online at UF Health.
