Radiation Therapists See Advancements in the Field
This blog is now focused on laboratory specialties. This article is here for your information only, as jobs are no longer provided for any radiation technician specialties.
Properly positioning the patient before administering a dose of radiation is extremely important because radiation therapists are trying to precisely target a malignancy and not the nearly healthy tissue. Some areas of the body are easy to keep still and target accurately, but areas like the lungs, cannot remain still for the duration of a radiation treatment, which has presented radiation therapists with quite a challenge. 
A technique called respiratory gating has been used by radiation therapists with some success. When this technique began the patient would tell the radiation therapist when they got to a certain point in their breathing cycle. The radiation therapist would then try to administer the dose at the same time each breath. This method obviously would have a fair about of user error and be quite difficult for a radiation therapist to perfect.
In recent years respiratory gating has become a much better process and much easier for radiation therapists to administer. It is now a more automatic process. There are sensors that emit radiation that are put on the patient that send signals to a computer showing the exact breathing pattern. This lets the radiation therapist do their work from the computer which is showing them the breathing pattern instead of the radiation therapist being told the pattern by the patient.
Another advancement that has been made to radiation therapy is the use of GPS to track patient movement. Dr. Sandler explained its use very well, stating, “Much like a GPS helps a driver determine where he is and where he is going, the Calypso’s wireless waves tell me exactly where the the prostate is and exactly how I should move the patient.” This technology has only been used for prostate cancer so far, although it is believed that it could be successfully used for other cancer types as well.
Learn about hiring a radiation therapist.
Source:
- McGraw, Mark (2007, October 15) “Something out of Star Wars” Today’s Radiation Therapy. Advance for Imaging and Radiation Therapy Professionals, 16-20
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