Doctor explains cancer services

By HANNAH NERO
Radiological services are for diagnosing and staging cancers and radiation services are for treating the cancers be it by curing or palliating the radiosensitive cancers.
That is from a consultant oncologist at the Pacific International Hospital while explaining the importance of radiation treatment of cancer and the lack of it in the country.
Dr Suresh Raghunath said the public must know the difference between the two in cancer management.
“Radiation treatment shoots high energy X-rays or photon beams 4,000-20,000 times the power of diagnostic X-rays on the tumour and the lymph node sites likely to harbour cancer to kill the cancer cells and often-times cure many common cancers in curable stages, the radiation machine used to treat cancer safely with these powerful radiation beams is called a linear accelerator,” Raghunath said.
He said this treatment is required to help with both curative and palliative treatments of various types of cancers in multimodality approach alongside cancer surgeries and chemotherapies.
Cancer in advanced stages cannot be cured with any single modality of approach like surgery alone or only chemotherapy or only radiation therapy and needs the optimal combination and sequence of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy which is proven by evidence based papers of pooled data across the cancer centres of the world since the last half a century.
Raghunath explained further that the data has matured and the cancer treatments were fine-tuned till present day, and now we have the optimal treatments, prognosis of outcomes, combinations and sequences for each type of cancer in each site.
For each site, stage and biology of cancer there is an optimal combination and treatment to cure a patient in curable stage.
Another way that radiation treatment is done is to place the radioactive source like iridium or cobalt into the tumour or close to the tumour to deliver a therapeutic dose as prescribed by a licenced oncologist as a boost to linear accelerator based external beam radiation in certain advanced tumours and as a single modality for small tumours and palliation of certain end-stage tumours.
Radiological services, on the other hand, are used for diagnosis and biopsy.
Raghunath said: “From CT Scans, PET Scans, MRIs, X-Rays, Mammograms and USGs, the disease is detected and staged after histopathological confirmation of a piece of the tumour observed under a microscope, treated with various chemical agents and immunohistochemistry stains by the pathologist in the Pathology Service.
“The tumour piece or pathological specimen is surgically excised by the surgeon or by radiological intervention by the radiologist,” Raghunath said.
“A biopsy specimen is taken to study the tumour and decide the optimal treatment for the scenario.
“With this understanding, PNG needs radiation and radiology equipment for effective diagnosing and treatment of cancer.”