Argumentative Essay On Radiation Therapy

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Radiation therapy has been an incredible tool in effectively ridding people of cancer. Children make up an immense part of that community, and the process can carry challenges that these children are not equipped to deal with. Radiation therapy is an effective form of cancer treatment but can convey a heavy toll upon a child; is the treatment comprehensible and do the risks outweigh the benefits? Many aspects of a child’s life can impact the type and the amount of treatment they are able to receive. For an example; socioeconomic factors play a main role in what kind of radiation therapy they may receive or if they are able to receive any treatment at all. A type of radiation therapy known as proton therapy has been proven to be more effective …show more content…

The majority of therapies will affect the normal tissues of the body as well as the cancer cells.3 This can result in side effects that occur during and after the completion of radiation therapy.3 There are two classes of affects from the radiation: early and late affects.3 Radiation therapy works by literally damaging the DNA of cells to a point where the cells cannot carry on living; this is done by the high energy of the radiation. For children and adults alike, this high energy does not pick just the cancer cells to damage, the energy can also disrupt normal function of a child’s normal cells and result in post therapy effects (whether it be acute or chronic.) Even though the high energy radiation can be dangerous, it can also be extremely effective in riding a child’s body of cancerous cells. This is especially true when using advanced delivery methods; these methods can be intensity modulated or stereotactic.3 These delivery methods keep the radiation in a small focal spot, restricting the high-energy beams from damaging healthy cells. However, there is never a guarantee that children’s healthy cells will not be affected in a negative manor because there are healthy cells in every aspect of the body and there is not a precise enough way to target only cancer cells with high energy radiation. Radiation therapy can be challenging for anyone to withstand, especially a child, but it is an extremely effective way to treat and rid the body of cancer cells despite the threat to healthy

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