What does a radiation oncologist do?
There are various areas of oncology specialties: There’s pediatric, surgical, radiation and medical. Radiation therapy is the use of X-rays and other forms of ionizing radiation to treat patients. Most of our patients are cancer patients, but we have a few who are not. There are a few non-cancerous conditions and some benign tumors that we treat, including non-cancerous over-growth of blood vessels and other tissues or nerves in the brain. With radiation, it’s very much a team approach. There are about 2,010 centers in the country that employ about 29,000 people nationwide. Everyone is very important in the process for safe and accurate treatment delivery. And I think we are one of the leaders in quality assurance and safety in medicine, because we really have developed procedures to make sure that patients get treatment to the right area and it’s done correctly. What types of cancer would you use radiation to treat? About half of our patients either have breast, prostate or lung cance
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