Curative treatment

Radiotherapy is often given with the aim of destroying a tumour and curing the cancer. When radiotherapy is given in this way it is described as radical radiotherapy.

Radiotherapy may be used on its own or may be given before or after surgery or chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is the use of anti-cancer drugs to destroy cancer cells. If radiotherapy and chemotherapy are given at the same time, this treatment is known as chemoradiotherapy.

For some types of curative radiotherapy treatment, you may need to go to the hospital each weekday for between two and seven weeks. In this situation, a small dose of radiotherapy is given each time. This is because as well as damaging cancer cells, radiotherapy can also cause damage to healthy cells in the treatment area. If a very high dose of treatment was given all in one go, it could cause too much damage to the healthy cells, so small doses are given to allow them to recover in between.

Palliative treatment

Sometimes, when it is not possible to cure a cancer, radiotherapy may be given to relieve symptoms – for example, to lessen pain. This is called palliative treatment. Lower doses of radiotherapy are given than for curative treatment, usually over a shorter period of time (sometimes just a single treatment).

Total body irradiation

This type of radiotherapy is used much less commonly than the other types of radiotherapy, but may be given to people who are having a stem cell transplant as part of their treatment.

A large single dose, or six to eight smaller doses of radiation is given to the whole body to destroy the cells of the bone marrow. Very high doses of chemotherapy are also given. This treatment is followed by giving stem cells by a drip into a vein, to replace the bone marrow that has been destroyed.

This type of radiotherapy is described in our section on stem cell and bone marrow transplants.