Proton Therapy: Technique of the Future to Treat Cancer Patients

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in using proton beam therapy to treat certain types of cancer in many countries around the world. However, some countries never used proton beam therapy and do not have any center for it. One of these countries is Iraq. Although the advantages of proton beam therapy over photon beam therapy to treat several types of cancer, it remains unused in Iraq and several countries. This may be due to the high cost of building a proton beam therapy center, a lack of information about this advanced modality that can save many lives, or the absence of a trained staff of oncologists, medical physicists, and technicians who know how to work with the proton beam therapy center. Here in this review, light will be shed on proton beam therapy and its advantages and disadvantages, and the specific types of cancers should be treated by this modality rather than photon beam therapy.