antheus1

You motorboatin’ son of a bitch!

There are side effect from protons. In short, the biological activity of protons is roughly the same as conventional radiation (photons). Both protons and photons deposit an entrance dose, that is they leave some radiation along the path to their target. The main difference is that photons also have an exit dose, that is radiation continues on after reaching the target depositing low doses of radiation in the tissue downstream from the beam path, whereas protons for the most part do not. He could probably expect skin changes on that side of the neck and some mucositis on the inner cheek on that side but will likely have less scatter of radiation into the mouth and thus less irritation of the oral cavity as a whole

Yes I’m a radiation oncologist.

It’s got a lot of potential. There are certain disease sites where it makes a lot of sense and can really spare a lot of toxicity. Unfortunately the costs are astronomical and there really isn’t a ton of clinical trial data showing it is materially different with regards to long term toxicity or effectiveness.

Thanks for everything you guys do, it makes our job a lot easier to have good therapists!