ANA Discussion Forum

Treatment Options => Radiation / Radiosurgery => Topic started by: keithmcgowan on March 19, 2013, 09:47:51 am

Title: Single dose vs fractionated
Post by: keithmcgowan on March 19, 2013, 09:47:51 am
Thank you for all of your replies regarding radiation treatment.  I have finally decided on proton therapy for my AN.  Next choice is single dose or fractionated radiation.  Please tell me which is better in terms of killing the tumor and the safest health wise.
Thanks
Title: Re: Single dose vs fractionated
Post by: arizonajack on March 19, 2013, 10:38:05 pm
Thank you for all of your replies regarding radiation treatment.  I have finally decided on proton therapy for my AN.  Next choice is single dose or fractionated radiation.  Please tell me which is better in terms of killing the tumor and the safest health wise.
Thanks

I looked over your previous posts and all you say is that you have a 2cm tumor.

You don't reveal any of your age, symptoms, hearing issues, all the dimensions and location and all of those variables go into helping you evaluate your choices.

Anyway, we can't tell you what's better for you.

All any of us can tell you is why we chose what we chose.

I chose single session Gamma Knife for the following reasons:

1 - I'm 66 and there was no way I was having my head cut open if I could help it.
2 - My hearing on the AN side was totally gone so there was nothing to save.
3 - I was still going to have balance issues no matter what. Although I have had some modest improvement there, even before the GK.
4 - I read that GK was accurate down to about 1mm and my tumor was 4mm x 4mm by 12mm. Small enough to require pinpoint accuracy.
5 - One time treatment. In and out same day. Stick a fork in it, it's done.

Title: Re: Single dose vs fractionated
Post by: PaulW on March 20, 2013, 07:09:54 am
I know Proton Therapy sounds good in theory.
Worth doing more research, particularly around range uncertainty, minimum diameter beam sizes, image guidance, overall accuracy and most importantly actual results.

Some nice articles to get you started

http://medicalphysicsweb.org/cws/article/research/50584
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12943574
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12182972