Principles
Radiation therapy is used to kill cancer cells; however, normal cells are also damaged in the process. Currently, therapeutic doses of radiation can be targeted to tumors with great accuracy using linear accelerators (see radiation oncology); however, the normal liver tissue is very sensitive to external beam radiotherapy. Fortunately, malignancies (including primary and metastatic liver cancers) are often hypervascular; tumor blood supplies are often increased compared to those of normal tissue. Furthermore, the liver has a dual blood supply, receiving blood from both the hepatic artery and the portal vein. Hepatic malignancies derive most of their blood supply from the hepatic artery; whereas the normal liver derives most of its blood supply from the portal vein. Therefore, delivery of radioembolic particles through the branch of the hepatic artery supplying a tumor will preferentially lead to deposition of the particles in the tumor, while sparing normal liver from harmful side effects.
Read more about this topic: Selective Internal Radiation Therapy
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being—which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs—where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy ... is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)