Radiation
Radiation therapy uses high-energy X-rays to kill cancer cells. Although not a common treatment for fallopian tube cancer, radiation is sometimes included in a treatment plan.
Penn Radiation Oncology uses the most advanced equipment and technology available to treat fallopian tube cancer. We are recognized leaders in techniques that target radiation precisely to the treatment area while sparing normal tissue.
At Penn Medicine, you’ll have access to new and advanced treatment options and ongoing clinical trials in radiation therapy, some of which are available only at Penn Medicine.
Brachytherapy involves placing radioactive implants, such as metal pellets, seeds, ribbons, wires, needles, capsules or tubes in small sealed holders inside your body. The implants may be in place for only a short time, or may remain in your body permanently. This allows us to treat you with a high dose of radiation to a smaller area than is possible with external radiation. This limits radiation exposure to your healthy surrounding tissues.
Conformal radiation therapy gives us more control when treating tumors. In conformal radiation, a special computer uses CT imaging scans to create 3-D maps of the location of your cancer. The system permits the delivery of radiation from several directions, and the beams can then be shaped, or conformed, to match the shape of the cancer. Conformal radiation therapy limits radiation exposure to nearby healthy tissue, as well as the tissue in the beam’s path.
In IGRT, the linear accelerators (machines that deliver radiation) are equipped with imaging technology that takes pictures of your tumor immediately before or during the time radiation is delivered. Specialized computer software compares these images of your tumor to the images taken during the simulation to establish your individualized treatment plan. Necessary adjustments can then be made to your position and/or the radiation beams to more precisely target radiation at the cancer and to avoid exposure to your healthy surrounding tissue.
Our radiation oncologists use intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) to treat fallopian tube cancer. This advanced mode of high-precision radiotherapy uses computer-controlled linear accelerators to deliver precise radiation doses to tumors or specific areas within the tumors. Radiation therapy, including IMRT, stops cancer cells from dividing and growing, thus slowing or stopping tumor growth. In many cases, radiation therapy is capable of killing all of the cancer cells. Using 3-D computed tomography (CT) images and computerized dose calculations, IMRT allows for the radiation dose to conform more precisely to the three-dimensional shape of your tumor. This is done by controlling the intensity of the radiation beam in multiple small volumes. The therapy allows higher radiation doses to be focused on regions within your tumor while minimizing the dose to surrounding normal critical structures.
PET scans create computerized images of chemical changes, such as metabolism, that take place in the tissue. This helps locate a tumor, because cancer cells have a higher metabolism rate than other tissues in your body.
Through the combined matching of a CT scan with PET images, there is an improved capacity to determine whether tissues are abnormal. Radiation oncologists also use the PET images to check the effectiveness of radiation treatments on cancer cells.