Review Article
Palliative – Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) and Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT): Innovative and Effective Tool in the Management of Advanced Cancer Using Modern Radiotherapy Instrumentation
Beatriz E. Amendola*, Marco Amendola, Naipy Perez, Jesus M. Blanco and Xiaodong WuInnovative Cancer Institute 6141, Sunset Drive Suite 102 South Miami, FL 33143, USA
- *Corresponding Author:
- Beatriz E. Amendola
Innovative Cancer Institute 6141
Sunset Drive Suite 102
South Miami, FL 33143, USA
Tel: 1305-669-6833
E-mail: dramendola@innovativecancer.com
Received date: February 06, 2015; Accepted date: March 16, 2015; Published date: March 27, 2015
Citation: Amendola BE, Amendola M, Perez N, Blanco JM, Wu X (2015) Palliative – Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS) and Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT): Innovative and Effective Tool in the Management of Advanced Cancer Using Modern Radiotherapy Instrumentation. J Palliat Care Med 5:216. doi: 10.4172/2165-7386.1000216
Copyright: © 2015 Amendola BE, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Radiation therapy remains an indispensable tool in palliative care. However, in the past, in order to achieve the results needed, palliative radiation therapy took weeks, a span of time which was often too long for terminal patients to bear. Advances in medical imaging and radiation therapy hardware and software have made possible to deliver high doses of focal radiation using shortened fractionation schemes. These may range from 1 to 5 fractions, targeting only the tumor area with optimized protection of normal tissue, which results in minimal toxicity, less physical demands to the patient and most importantly, more prompt palliative response. A novel radiation therapy technique, called “Stereotactic Radiosurgery” (SRS) or “Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy” (SBRT), originally developed and used as primary modality of treatment for many cancers with curative intent, is becoming an invaluable tool in the palliative care of patients with terminal cancer. In this article, we describe a typical case where SRS/SBRT demonstrates its value and efficacy and discuss present and future applications of this innovative technique in the palliative care of patients with terminal cancers.
