The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) this month became the first U.S. medical center to offer a speedier cancer radiation therapy. The new technique can turn a 20-minute radiotherapy session into a 90-second session for selected patients.

A five day course of radiotherapy to treat breast cancer may, in some cases, expose as much lung and heart tissue to potentially toxic radiation as does the standard six weeks of treatment, say researchers at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville.

Readily available CT screening for lung cancer is increasing the discovery of small, primary lung cancers. For many, a radiation technique called stereotactic body radiotherapy presents a less invasive treatment option to surgery that is typically offered to non-surgical candidates.

Radiation therapy affects not only the cancer mass, but also the surrounding tissues, including the bone marrow. Signals from the cells in the bone marrow damaged by cancer radiotherapy could be involved in the development of secondary acute myeloma by drawing hematopoietic stem cells, the blood-producing cells of the bone marrow, from distant sites into the irradiated bone marrow, according to researchers from the Ontario Cancer Institute.