Five radiation treatment myths and the facts you need to know
If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, it’s normal to have some questions, and a lot of concerns. The best way to handle your new journey is with reliable information. We asked an expert to clear up some myths about radiation treatment.
“Most of the people we see, it’s their first experience with radiation,” said Deborah Jiang, MD, a radiation oncologist at Clark Cancer Center at Falmouth Hospital, and Davenport-Mugar Cancer Center at Cape Cod Hospital. “They will be appropriately concerned about radiation, so we see them in consultation and discuss what they can expect from the logistics of the radiation and the potential side effects.”
Below, Dr. Jiang breaks down five common myths around radiation treatment.
Myth 1: I’m going to suffer awful side effects.
When we discuss the treatment, we review all the possible side effects. This can include some side effects that sound really bad, but a lot of the time it’s a very, very small risk of them happening. Everybody varies. Some people go through the whole radiation treatment and they barely feel anything or get any of the side effects. Some people get a few of them. There’s no way to predict which way it will end up.
Side effects vary depending on what kind of cancer it is and where in the body we’re treating. Each area of the body usually comes with its own set of side effects.
Myth 2: My skin will burn.
That’s not the case except when we’re targeting cancers on the skin. For deeper organs, we have to go through the skin to deliver the radiation, so it gets a little sensitive or there may a little bit of dry peeling.
We usually see our patients every week while the radiation's going on and we see plenty of skin reactions. There are different skincare routines and different creams we can recommend. Very, very rarely we’ll see a more severe kind of burn where there are blisters and sometimes a little bit of drainage. If that’s the case, we have appropriate dressings and medications. But unless the skin itself is the target, most of the time it’s just a little bit of redness and pinkness.
If the skin is sensitive, we tell patients to protect it from really hot things and having too much sun exposure while the radiation’s going on. But it’s very localized, because the radiation is so targeted. If we’re treating the breast, which is a very common cancer, they’re not going to get a skin reaction on their head or elsewhere on the body.
Myth 3: I’ll feel sick and lose my hair.
Feeling sick usually only happens if we’re targeting organs that can cause nausea. That would be mostly the brain, but sometimes the esophagus, the stomach, and the bowel. If we’re treating something that’s not in those areas, then there’s almost no chance that they’ll get nausea from radiation.
Hair loss is very similar to the skin reaction in that it depends on the target. The only place they might lose hair is where we’re treating. If we’re treating the brain, they may lose some of the hair on their head. If we’re treating the chest, sometimes they might lose hair on the chest. If we’re treating the breast, they’re not going to lose the hair on their head from radiation.
Myth 4: I’ll be radioactive after treatment.
I would say the majority of the time we’re doing external radiation where it's just like X-rays. We deliver it, and as soon as the machine's off, there is no more active radiation within the patient, so they are not at all radioactive.
The only time they are radioactive is sometimes with radioactive iodine and radioactive prostate seeds. That's a different procedure and we warn them about how much radiation they’re going to be giving off and what they can’t be around during those times. But the majority of the treatments that we do, there is no chance that they will become radioactive.
Myth 5: Radiation treatment will cause cancer.
You get radiation from the environment, and you get radiation from food. There is a risk of radiation treatment causing a cancer, but it’s very, very low and, if it happens, it usually happens years or decades into the future. In most cases, we believe that the benefits of the therapeutic radiation in helping to address the cancer that they currently have outweighs the side effects and this very small risk of cancer years down the line.
