Tag : MD Anderson Proton Center

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ENDURANCE ATHLETES COACHED BY VITAL VOICE

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Thousands of miles from his Austin, Texas, home, endurance athletes coached by Bill Earthman are training for grueling, day-long tests of strength and stamina like no other: the Ironman Triathlon.   Bill’s athletes live and train in the U.S., the U.K., South Africa, Peru, Mexico and Australia. And they may travel to nearly every continent of the world to compete in Ironman Triathlon series events.   Participants first must swim 2.4 miles. Then, they immediately bike a 112-mile route. And finally, they run 26.2 miles. All in 17 hours or less, challenged by weather, waters and terrain unique to the venue — and by the body’s creeping levels of lactic acid that can cripple an athlete’s performance.   “You don’t want to work too hard or work too... Full article

Advances in technology, clear clinical benefits will drive more cancer doctors to use protons

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The latest technical advancement in proton therapy is already providing such compelling early evidence of its benefit for patients, a leading radiation oncologist predicts it will become standard treatment for many cancers.   In use at MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center in Houston, Texas, for more than three years now, intensity modulated proton therapy (IMPT) permits doctors to treat one tiny section of a tumor... Full article

Stories of prostate cancer survivors built credible expectations for proton treatments

Colonel (Ret.) Alton Whitley completed his prostate cancer treatments in November 2013 at MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center in Houston, Texas.
Alton Whitley is an analytical guy. Numbers — data — drove Whitley’s decisions during his whole career as a fighter pilot with the U.S. Air Force. But when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in early 2013, data didn’t drive the retired colonel’s decision about which treatment would be best. The stories of cancer survivors did. “I was raised in a family where you were expected to make decisions and they... Full article

Secondary and recurrent cancers may be good candidates for protons

Anita Mahajan, MD, medical director at MD Anderson Proton Center in Houston, Texas.
For cancer survivors, cancer’s return can be a sudden, agonizing punch to the gut. And that’s especially true for patients whose cancer develops in the same area where the first cancer had been successfully treated with radiation. Physicians have a harder time using photon treatments a second time. They don’t want inadvertent radiation to re-injure adjacent tissues and organs — over and above the... Full article