Kids' bodies can be more sensitive to cancer treatments. How have treatments changed to work for growing bodies?
Learn about proton therapy from a Mayo Clinic oncologist.
We asked a Mayo Clinic oncologist: How does proton therapy improve treatment for kids with cancer?
Nadia Laack, M.D., Radiation Oncology: Children are much more sensitive to the effects of radiation than adults are. The traditional, typical forms of radiation often resulted in things like developmental delay and difficulty for the brain to grow and develop to learn new things.
Proton beam therapy has been one of the major advances in treatment of children who need radiation. The main difference between a proton and a photon is it stops. So we can guide it to a certain depth and we can say, "I want this one to go an inch," or "I want this one to go half an inch." With proton treatments in kids, we're not even seeing the effects on IQ after brain radiation. Sometimes even higher chances of cure with lower toxicity, with lower side effects.
How does proton beam therapy feel to kids?
Dr. Laack: The nice thing about sharing proton beam therapy with children is that it's not painful. They can't see it or feel it when it's happening. We normally try to describe it in a way hopefully that makes a little bit more sense to them. They're like a laser beam where it's very fine precision and accuracy, and we're blasting their tumor with little laser beams to blast away the tumor cells.
What's important to all of us is to try to allow the child some decision-making control. Sometimes it's really basic, like do you want the red blanket or the blue blanket. We have them pick the designs on their masks, so they can pick Batman, or they can pick Ironman or they can pick a theme for how they decorate their masks.
We are constantly amazed by the resilience of children. We talk all the time about how they can usually teach us about resilience.
Dr. Laack has brought innovative radiation treatments to hundreds of children diagnosed with cancer.
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