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Basics of Planning and Management of Patients during Radiation Therapy pp 171–182Cite as

An Introduction to Brachytherapy

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Abstract

Brachytherapy can deliver a high dose to the tumour while sparing the surrounding normal tissues and is based on the principle of rapid dose fall-off with increasing distance based on the “inverse square law” where a 1 cm difference in coverage can result in dose falling by even half. This involves placing implants in the form of seeds, wires or pellets directly into the tumour. Such implants may be temporary or permanent depending on the implant and the tumour itself. The benefit of such a method is that the tumour receives nearly the entire dose, while healthy tissue hardly receives any. In brachytherapy, very high doses are always obtained close to the sources, and there are actually no large volumes for which the dose is nearly homogeneous as in external beam therapy. The objectives of brachytherapy are to achieve disease control and cure, enable a high tumour-to-normal tissue dose ratio (reducing radiation morbidities), preserve organ function and cosmesis and occasionally use for re-irradiation of recurrent tumours.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiotherapy, Regional Cancer Centre, JIPMER Department of Radiotherapy, Puducherry, India

    Ashutosh Mukherji

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  1. Ashutosh Mukherji
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Mukherji, A. (2018). An Introduction to Brachytherapy. In: Basics of Planning and Management of Patients during Radiation Therapy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6659-7_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6659-7_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-6658-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-6659-7

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