Curing Cancer with Radiotherapy: Past, Present and Future

A free public lecture organised by The Royal College of Radiologists and the Royal Society of Medicine

Of the major types of treatment now regularly used for cancer, radiotherapy has surely remained the unsung hero. X-rays were initially discovered in the late 1890's,
and rapidly used both for diagnosis - creating an internal image of organs hidden deep within the body - and in the case of more powerful radiation beams, radiotherapy,
as a remarkably effective treatment for cancer.

With the advent of much more powerful and precise radiotherapy beams, our approach to cancer treatment has undergone a genuine revolution of the past 25 years.
Nowadays, over 50% of all patients with cancer are treated with radiotherapy at some point during their illness, often with a realistic aim of total cure without surgery
being necessary. Most people simply don't realise that radiotherapy is sometimes capable of curing cancer patients in whom surgery is impossible, and it is also often
used as a wonderfully powerful palliative tool, in patients with more advanced cancer where relief of symptoms is the goal.

This public lecture will celebrate everything that radiotherapy is capable of achieving for patients with cancer, and is timed to coincide with the Cancer Research-UK and
Royal College of Radiologists-supported Year of Radiotherapy 2011. 2011 also marks the Centenary of Marie Curie's Nobel Prize for her and her husband's pioneering
work in the discovery of radium.

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