One-Shot Radiation Eases Cancer Bone Pain by Megan Rauscher Patients with breast or prostate cancer can experience intense pain if the cancer spreads to the bones. This pain can be relieved by treatment with a single dose of radiation, according to new findings presented Monday to the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's annual meeting in Salt Lake City. "The standard way of treating pain from bone metastases is to give two weeks of radiation therapy, and we found that a single treatment with a slightly higher dose was just as effective as the longer course of treatment and much more convenient," Dr. William F. Hartsell told Reuters Health. He and his associates studied 897 breast or prostate cancer patients with moderate to severe bone pain who were randomly assigned to treatment with 8 units of radiation given in one session, or to a total of 30 units spread over ten treatments given in a two-week period. Both approaches were "very effective" at relieving pain, reported Hartsell, of Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois. For the entire group, two-thirds of patients had a complete or partial improvement in pain three months after radiation therapy. Moreover, "one-third of patients had enough improvement in their pain that they could completely get off of their pain medication," Hartsell said. Only ten percent of patients reported a worsening of their pain. Both treatments were quite well tolerated with few side effects. "Surprisingly," Hartsell told Reuters Health, "toxicity of the larger single dose was less than the toxicity seen with the longer protracted schedule." The finding that a single radiation therapy session provides equivalent relief of pain as the longer treatment course is "good news for cancer patients," Hartsell said. "These patients who are in moderate to severe pain can come in for a single treatment and the vast majority of them will have significant improvement in their pain," he said. Thanks to Reuters Health, 10/03 Ivanoe.com, 4/05 JNCI, 6/01/05 Single Therapeutic Dose of Radiation Causes Bone Loss Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encylopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.