Proton Therapy: Precision Cancer Care, Close to Home

Proton therapy is one of the most advanced forms of radiation therapy available today, designed to precisely target tumors while minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissues. Learn how proton therapy works, who may benefit and why having access to innovative care close to home is so meaningful for patients and families. 

Protons, compared to standard photons or X-rays, are positively charged particles. They are a heavier particle. Their energy and their dose deposition along that beam path are very low. Protons can deposit all their energy and all of our dose at the tumor at that buildup location. There's no exit dose past that. 

And some people can't have repeat radiation therapy because certain critical organs have a maximum dose that they can tolerate. And with protons, as we've talked about, different than photon therapy, they could actually have that stopping power and spare those organs in their entirety to facilitate repeat treatment. 

When Is Proton Therapy the Best Choice

Ask your doctor because it can be used for lots of different situations. We encourage you to have a conversation with your doctor, but proton therapy has heavy use for pediatric patients, brain tumors, for tumors that are at the base of the skull or the spinal cord, and also in the setting if you've had prior radiation. Protons can allow us to spare other structures in a way that we can't with conventional X-rays. If you have a question, please reach out to your physicians, and they can have a conversation with you about that. 

Proton therapy may be considered specifically when we're treating pediatric patients, treating young children, and particularly because they're still growing. With protons, because we're able to stop that beam at a certain depth, we can spare a lot of structures, especially their growth plate and their brain, so, a very important utilization for pediatric patients.

For patients who have had prior radiation therapy, it can allow us to spare things that conventional X-rays or photons cannot, and also in tumors of the brain, the spinal cord and base of skull. If you have any questions about if proton therapy could be right for you, we encourage you to reach out to your doctor and have these conversations.

Treating Pediatric Cancer With Proton Therapy

As a physician specializing in pediatric radiation oncology for many years, we've had to send patients out of state for proton therapy. With our new facility here, we do not need to send anybody outside of state, which is an amazing development for patients and families in Wisconsin. In collaboration with Children's Wisconsin, the oncology team over there, as well as surgeons, we work together, and we help our children who are referred to Children's Wisconsin. We will be able to improve the care that we give to our children in Wisconsin and out of state. 

For most pediatric cancers, protons are suitable, especially for younger children who have lots of developing tissues that can be affected by very low doses of radiation. Because of that, proton therapy can actually reduce that scattered low dose to normal tissues and help kids' tissues develop, like growth of the bones or other tissues, muscles or more critical things like brain tissue, development of the brain. 

We anticipate using proton therapy for a variety of malignancies, including pediatric malignancies, central nervous system tumors, head and neck cancers, certain types of lymphomas, tumors involving the liver and also in settings where radiation has already been used and a second course of radiation is necessary. 

Our goal with clinical trials related to proton therapy would be to expand indications for cancer treatment using protons in different types of malignancies and also increase evidence to bring proton therapy to become the standard of care for more types of malignancies. It is important to provide a variety of technological options for our patients and proton therapy is certainly one of them. This is particularly important for patients who have difficult diseases that require a different kind of technology that would help them to reduce side effects and improve outcomes.