His body gowned in cotton and his soul cloaked in despair, the cancer patient held few hopes two decades ago when he was wheeled to the hospital radiotherapy room. X ray usually was tried when surgery was impossible. Successful treatments were few, and often bought at the cost of radiation burn, nausea, anemia, and pneumonitis.
Last week, at the American Roentgen Ray Society meeting in Miami Beach, it was apparent that radiotherapy is rapidly fighting its way out of the last-resort category. Said Memorial Sloan-Kettering's
Dr. James Nickson: "Over the next decade, radiotherapists will see not minor, slow changes in their ability to...