Flash radiation therapy, also called Flash-RT, can eliminate the debilitating side effects associated with traditional radiation therapy by delivering the same dose in tenths of seconds, and can remove tumors, according to a study published in Clinical Cancer Research.
Researchers used Flash-RT to remove brain tumors in mice and found it to be just as effective as the traditional method. Mice were monitored for one month after Flash-RT exposure, according to the study.
Flash-RT's ability to eliminate the toxicities of conventional radiation treatments has been previously studied, but this research also concluded that the treatment is successfully able to remove tumors, a previous question about the efficacy of Flash-RT.
The price of a Flash irradiation machine "will be no more and possibly less than typical linear accelerators used in current clinical practice that generally run from $5 million to $9 million," Charles Limoli, PhD, a researcher and professor of radiation oncology at University of California Irvine, told Becker's.
"It's not unreasonable to expect that in 10 years, this may become a widespread option for radiotherapy patients worldwide," Dr. Limoli told the news site at UC Irvine.