INSTRUCTION: Read the following text to answer question.
Brachytherapy: A Tool for Fighting Cancer
Imagine you are camping at night, and you are sitting
inside a tent. You want to read a book, but it is too dark.
If someone outside the tent shines a flashlight at the book,
that might help – you might be able to do some reading,
especially if the person with the flashlight is not too far
away. If the person with the flashlight gets very close
to the tent, it will probably be easier to read your book.
If you have a flashlight with you inside the tent and you
hold your flashlight right up next to the pages of the book,
then you are really in business! Brachytherapy is a little like
this flashlight, because doctors deliver a dose of radiation
right up close to tumor cells instead of treating them from
farther away.
There are several ways to treat cancer using radiation. [...]
When healthcare providers use beams of radiation from
outside the patient, like with the linear accelerator, that is
a little like shining the flashlight from outside of the tent.
This is a great option, especially if doctors can aim the beam
very carefully at the target. Another way to treat cancer
with radiation is by using little pieces of radioactive metal.
If doctors put the radioactive source right into the tumor
that they are trying to treat, the cancer cells will get a high
dose of radiation. This is what is done in brachytherapy.
Radiation Seeds and Extra Special Robots
There are several ways healthcare providers can deliver
brachytherapy treatments. The first one that we will
talk about is to use lots of little capsules, called seeds.
Even though they are called seeds, these are a lot different
than the kind of seeds you use in your garden! These
seeds are pretty small – they are each about the size of
a grain of rice. A doctor can surgically implant these seeds
directly inside a tumor. The seeds stay in place inside and,
because they are radioactive, they release radiation right
where the cancer is.
In another type of brachytherapy, healthcare providers can
use a robot called an afterloader that controls where the
radioactive source is placed in the patient. This robot can
move the source through special tubes into the inside of a
patient. When the treatment is over, the robot removes the
source from the patient. When the radiation source is not
being used for treatment, it sits inside a container inside
the robot. That container is made of lead so that it blocks
radiation. The afterloader can be controlled from outside
the treatment room, so the doctor and other members of
the healthcare team can be outside of the room while the
source is outside of its special container and is being used
to treat the patient. This makes delivering radiation safer
for the medical team, because they are not exposed to
radiation each time they treat a patient.
Available at: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/
frym.2024.1378550. Accessed on: July 27, 2024.
Brachytherapy is a cancer treatment method that
