What does the amount of radiation time mean?
Full Question: I have a small acoustic neuroma and my friends wife has a larger one. We both had radiosurgery at different hospitals. When we were talking, she said she had less time in the machine than I did. Did I get too much radiation? The treatment time is a factor of the dose given and the half-life of the cobalt60 in the treating machine. Apparently, the machine you were treated on had cobalt60 that was older and required more time to emit the dose required to you appropriately. The half-life of cobalt60 is 5.26 years. This means the same treatment given when the cobalt was fresh would take twice as long to give 5.26 years later. 14 M.D. Anderson The four main reasons for having neurosurgery on a suspected brain tumor are: • Diagnosis, to obtain a sample to confirm whether a tumor is present, and to help guide treatment decisions • Decompression, to relieve symptoms caused by the size of the tumor, or the edema caused by the tumor • Cytoreduction, to reduce the amount of tumor t
