Radiation has become a significant tool in diagnosing and treating patients. Radiation is routinely used to treat cancer and many of the routine diagnostic imaging tests use radiation to discover what is ailing patients. Complications and injuries occur when patients are unnecessarily over exposed to radiation.
Radiation battles cancer by eliminating the cancerous tumor. It kills the genetic material that allows cells to grow and multiply. With all radiation treatments, radiation must enter and exit the body through healthy tissue causing damage to the area surrounding the tumor. Typical injuries associated with radiation include redness, soreness, and skin burns comparable to sun burn. Injuries that occur from over radiation are much more severe and include damaging the blood vessels that provide nourishment to the skin. Over radiation destroys healthy cells creating severe wounds that are unlikely to heal. After soft tissue damage, over radiation can cause bone death most commonly in the head and the jaw. Finally, over exposure to radiation can lead to organ failure and death.
Patients suffering from severe and repeated over exposure to radiation have suffered crippling injuries with the majority ending in death. A woman with breast cancer underwent targeted radiation treatments and suffered a gaping wound in her chest that refused to heal even after numerous attempts through surgery to cure the injury. Eventually the woman died when her breast cancer resurfaced because the radiation was not effectively treating the disease.
Another man was left blind, death, unable to swallow, severely burned, nauseated and unable to breathe after several repeated doses of radiation that was not targeted to his tumor. Patients are receiving inappropriate doses of radiation in the wrong areas of the body with some receiving treatments specifically designed for other patients. With radiation there is always some damage to healthy tissue but the injuries should never be crippling or life threatening. Unusual injuries should be immediately reported to doctors before it is too late. In today's health care it is almost impossible to avoid radiation but radiation is a tool doctors to diagnose and treat not harm and kill.
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