• Question: have you ever missed cancer cells with your radiation gun?

    Asked by jamster13 to Leila on 12 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by courtzz.
    • Photo: Leila Nichol

      Leila Nichol answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      It’s not really a radiation “gun”, it’s a huge massive machine that rotates around you called a linear accelerator (see pictures on my profile!)
      Sometimes there are tumour cells that you can’t see that have spread, either further away from the tumour or sometimes to a completely different site. These are subclinical cells. When we treat we try and get all these, but you can’t always account for what you can’t see, so sometimes they do get missed and sometimes this can lead to a recurrence unfortunately.

Comments