This is the post I was trying to explain from Brian. He, of course, says it much better then I do. My only desire is to keep it in the open that IMRT is not for everyone.

Brian Hill
OCF Founder
Member # 4

posted February 15, 2004 03:26 PM
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February 15, 2004 11:26 AM
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I wanted to weigh in on this one because it is such a great technology, but it is not for everyone. If you do a search here on the boards for IMRT you will see similar comments in the past. As great as it is, and as much reduction in after affects that it yields, IMRT isn't for everyone, especially late stage threes ands fours. Even if I had had the opportunity for IMRT 5 years ago, (which I did not) I would not have chosen it because with extensive bilateral neck mets, who know for sure how many occult small cancers cells were in the surrounding tissues, (muscle, fatty, and others) that would have come back to bite me a year later. It works best in areas where the typical cancers are very confined, brain cancers for instance, and as Gary mentioned prostate cancer. These cancers require precious pinpoint accuracy and are usually well defined. They do not typically spread out into the surrounding tissues and become diffused in those tissues like most oral cancers do. So while I am the biggest proponent for this technology in early oral cancers, and in sweeping the areas of known mets even if nothing appears there on MRI's, or CT's, this cancer can end up in the osseous (boney) tissues of your mouth, your spine, and numerous other regional areas in it's early metastasis that are not always obvious to scanning and diagnostic technologies that we use. So primary