Irish team makes cancer treatment breakthrough

Breakthrough research by an Irish cancer team is likely to have global implications for the manner in which radiotherapy treatment is delivered to some patients, according to doctors leading the clinical trial.

Currently, patients with advanced cancer can suffer from the painful and paralysing effects of spinal cord compression when cancer spreads to the backbone — for which decompression surgery, combined with radiotherapy, is the current standard of care. Surgery is often ruled out due to the frailty of patients and radiotherapy routinely involves five-day treatments.

However, the Irish research project has found that a large single dose of radiotherapy produces the same outcome as the longer course of treatment, making treatment easier on the patient and less expensive to deliver.