BBC: Proton beam cancer therapy 'effective with fewer side effects'

Proton beam therapy for cancer causes fewer side effects than conventional radiotherapy, research suggests.

The study, published in The Lancet Oncology, suggests the therapy is also as effective as other treatments.

It pointed to similar survival rates and a lower impact on hearts and lungs.

In 2014 the therapy was at the centre of a controversy over NHS care for children when the parents of Ashya King took him out of hospital in Hampshire to obtain the treatment abroad.

Their actions led to a police operation to find them.

Ashya, who was five at the time of his treatment, is now cancer free, his family said last year.

'Acceptable toxicity'

The study, which was led by Dr Torunn Yock from the Massachusetts General Hospital in the US, looked at 59 patients, aged between three and 21, between 2003 and 2009.

All the patients had the most common kind of malignant brain tumour in children, known as medulloblastoma.

After five years, their survival rate was similar to that of patients treated with conventional X-ray radiotherapy, but there were fewer side effects to the heart and lungs, the study found.

Dr Yock told BBC Radio 5 Live: "The major finding is that proton therapy is as effective as photon therapy [conventional X-ray radiotherapy] in curing these patients and what is also very exciting is that it is maintaining these high rates of cure but doing so with less late toxicity, which has dramatic quality of life improvements."

The paper said: "Proton radiotherapy resulted in acceptable toxicity and had similar survival outcomes to those noted with conventional radiotherapy, suggesting that the use of the treatment may be an alternative to photon-based treatments."

It uses charged particles instead of X-rays to deliver radiotherapy for cancer patients.

The treatment allows high-energy protons to be targeted directly at a tumour, reducing the dose to surrounding tissues and organs.

In general, it gives fewer side effects compared with high-energy X-ray treatments.

It can be used to treat spinal cord tumours, sarcomas near the spine or brain, prostate cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer and some children's cancers.

Read More: BBC