Destroying Cancer Cells with Radiation

For more than a century, radiation has been used to effectively treat a wide variety of cancers. Equipped with the latest technology, our radiation oncologists design and deploy highly effective treatment plans that specifically target cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue.

All of our radiation oncology services are at Community Cancer Institute — the only cancer center in California with all of these technologies under one roof:

CyberKnife® is the world’s first and only robotic radiosurgery system designed to treat tumors and lesions virtually anywhere in the body. Treatment is painless and doesn’t require surgery, so there’s no cutting, no anesthesia and no overnight hospital stay. 

Radioimmunotherapy specifically targets tumors and cancerous cells by attaching radioactive atoms to antibodies. These antibodies then seek out proteins found on cancer cells and deliver highly effective, cancer destroying doses of radiation.

Stereotactic Radiosurgery/CyberKnife is an advanced form of radiation therapy in which malignant and benign tumors are treated noninvasively with high-dose, precise beams of radiation — minimizing damage to healthy tissue surrounding a tumor during treatment.

Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) uses a device called a linear accelerator to deliver precise radiation therapy to cancerous tumors. The linear accelerator delivers hundreds of tiny beams of radiation while rotating around the patient, pinpointing cancer cells while avoiding healthy tissue.

Brachytherapy involves placing high-energy radioactive materials (e.g., needles, seeds, or tubes) in, on, or near a tumor to deliver concentrated doses of radiation. Depending upon the prescribed course of treatment, these materials can be left in the affected area for varying lengths of time.

In Prostate Brachytherapy, small radioactive “seeds” about the size of a grain of rice are placed throughout the prostate and left there permanently. Effective in destroying cancer cells, over time the seeds gradually lose their radioactivity, causing no long-term effect. Brachytherapy treatment is usually done in an outpatient setting.

Partial Breast Irradiation (PBI)/SAVI PBI is a form of radiation therapy that treats just the breast tumor area rather than the whole breast after a lumpectomy for early-stage breast cancer.