What is Proton Therapy?

The Samsung Medical Center officially opened the Proton Therapy Center in 2016, and cancer patients have been treated since then.

Proton therapy is called “Dream Treatment.” A proton beam that penetrates normal tissue and

pours out an enormous amount of radioactive energy on cancerous tissue removes the cancerous tissue

by radiating peak energy (i.e., Bragg peak) the moment it reaches the cancerous tissue, thus extinguishing it.

The reason that proton therapy has been recently drawing attention is that

radical cancer treatment is possible while minimizing the adverse effect of previous radiation therapy.

Previous radiation therapy using X-ray injures normal body tissues before and after radiation touches cancerous tissue,

thus increasing the secondary cancer occurrence rate or causing other adverse events.

On the other hand, the proton beam has little effect on tissues around the cancerous tissue.

Who is Proton therapy for?

Proton therapy can be applied to all types of cancers such as lung cancer, liver cancer, brain tumor, head and neck cancer, etc

that need radiation therapy, except for blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.

In particular, for pediatric cancer patients, proton therapy has little effect on tissues around the cancer.

As such, the possibility of having secondary cancer occurrence is low, and children can grow normally after receiving cancer treatment.

Previous X-ray treatment affected bone or organ growth of pediatric patients,

which often lead to patients experiencing various adverse effects and sequelae.

Also, proton therapy can be the only alternative for some cancers.

Chordoma, one of the rare cancers, is in proximity to the central nervous system, which

makes it hard to operate on and very resistant to the previous X-ray treatment.

However, with proton therapy, it has more than about 70% to 80% treatment effect.

Recurrent cancer, which has high concern for radiation treatment adverse effect, can be treated with a goal of full recovery.

What is the Proton therapy process?

2017.09.07