MedAustron offers an innovative form of radiation therapy (ion beam therapy) using protons and carbon ions.
Compared to conventional radiation beam therapy, this treatment modality is more gentle to the surrounding healthy tissue. With ion beam therapy, it is possible to reduce radiation exposure to adjacent healthy tissue and spare tissue behind the tumour almost entirely. Therefore, ion beam therapy is an optimal treatment of tumours close to radiosensitive organs, like the brain and the spinal cord, eyes, liver, and lungs.
Since tissue in growth is more sensitive to radiation, protons are particularly suitable for children and adolescents. The focus lies on reducing the risk of long-term consequences by sparing healthy tissue, including hormone and growth disorders and reducing the risk of secondary malignancies.
The protons used for ion beam therapy are positively charged nuclei of hydrogen atoms. They physically interact differently with the tissue compared to conventional radiotherapy with photons (gamma rays, X-rays) or electrons. Because ion beam therapy spares normal tissue, even higher doses of radiation are used. Here, the radiation is concentrated precisely on the diseased tissue and normal tissue is largely spared.
Another form of treatment is the ion beam therapy with carbon ions. Their biological effectiveness is about three times higher than that of protons. Even deep in the tissues they can be controlled with millimetre precision and are therefore superior to protons in treatment of certain cancer tumours. Thus, the carbon ion beam therapy is particularly suitable for bone and soft tissue, tumours with radiation-sensitive organs nearby, slow-growing tumours, oxygen-poor tumours or local recurrences after conventional radiotherapy. Promising studies have shown that also tumours resistant to conventional radiotherapy, are treatable in many cases .
Due to these facts, the fight against cancer gets a new, hopeful dimension.
