Short course radiation? 3D or IMRT?

[FightCRC]

Hi all...question for those who have had radiation. Did any of you do a short course? Also, what type of radiation, 3D or IMRT?

We were told that side effects will occur about 4-5 weeks after treatment ends. Doc pretty much said it'd be diarrhea and fatigue. But based on what I've read here, I'm concerned that they're downplaying this by a lot.

Thanks so much for any feedback.

[Gravelyguy]

Hi!

I had short course before surgery. It was done at Mayo- Rochester with a proton beam radiation machine. The only side effect I had was fatigue but it could have been from the lar surgery done a couple of days after completion of radiation. It sounds like it is way easier on your body than long course. They were very pleased with what the Folfox and Vectibix had done to my tumors so short course was all they wanted to do to hopefully kill of any wayward cancer cells in my rectum.

Hope this helps!

Dave

[Ehut]

Hi!

I had short course before surgery. It was done at Mayo- Rochester with a proton beam radiation machine. The only side effect I had was fatigue but it could have been from the lar surgery done a couple of days after completion of radiation. It sounds like it is way easier on your body than long course. They were very pleased with what the Folfox and Vectibix had done to my tumors so short course was all they wanted to do to hopefully kill of any wayward cancer cells in my rectum.

Hope this helps!

Dave

I also had short course radiation at Mayo in Rochester back in 2012, but that was before proton beam was available. To be honest, I've never heard of IMRT or 3D, so I can't answer that part. I had my LAR and liver resection the week after the radiation treatment, and I didn't notice any significant side effects from radiation. Recovery from surgery was difficult at times, but I don't think it was due to the radiation at all.

[Sammy2067]

Hi all...question for those who have had radiation. Did any of you do a short course? Also, what type of radiation, 3D or IMRT?

We were told that side effects will occur about 4-5 weeks after treatment ends. Doc pretty much said it'd be diarrhea and fatigue. But based on what I've read here, I'm concerned that they're downplaying this by a lot.

Thanks so much for any feedback.

I did short course radiation therapy for 5 days using IMRT! I had no side effects at all. Its possible that Proton beam therapy is even better as it really isolates the tumor area and deosnt go past it. But, IMRT isolates better than the other radiation techniques of old.

One thought! if you do long course (6 weeks chemo radiation) then, you bring the possibility of a Complete Pathological Response into play. Which means the tumor is pretty much all killed and nothing but scar tissue left behind. This happens up to 20 % of the time. Possibly a little more with a normal CEA pre-operative reading. You do the 6 weeks of ChemoRTa and over the next two months the tumor is being killed/shrunk and possibly all of it killed. Then you have surgery and go from there. Some people with a CPR are even doing a "wait and see" approach. They get scanned every 3 months for recurrence. As such, some are avoiding surgery, but surgery is so curative and pretty easy with Robotic laparoscopic surgery that it is not hard to do.

If you have a Complete Pathological Response, I would still do the surgery. Combined with both, the opportunity for a full cure is in 90 percentile. If you don't get a Complete Pathological Response, then you still do the surgery and 6 weeks Chemo Rad isn't that bad (probably more side effects that SCRT).

If i had to do it all over again, I would the 6 weeks of Chemo rad and being CPR into play. Then there is probably no adjuvant therapy needed. Even if stage 2a, its probably needed.

[Ehut]

The reason I chose short course was so they could do surgery sooner since my liver had responded fairly well to the pre-surgery chemo. If the cancer was not metastatic, then I would have probably done the standard course chemo-radiation.