Many families find themselves looking for treatment options that will allow them to beat the cancer diagnosis that they have recently received. From treatment for breast cancer to treatment options for prostate cancer, there are a number of times when families simply cannot come to terms with the challenges that they are facing until a doctor outlines a possible option.

Fortunately, there continue to be developments that offer a number of options for families as they face some of life’s most difficult challenges. Proton cancer treatment centers, for instance, continue to expand across the nation as a viable option for families who are looking for a way to win in the toughest battle they have ever faced.

Advanced Cancer Treatment Options Offer Hope to Many Families
Whether you are considering proton therapy for breast cancer or you are looking at this targeted approach for another type of cancer, it is always important to get more than one medical opinion. Even when the treatment option that will work best for you is not available in the closest cancer treatment center to your home, there are still many options that patients can find when they take the time to research and talk to more than one or two doctors.

Proton therapy is a type of radiation that stops at a very specific point in the targeted tissue. In comparison, conventional radiation continues beyond the tumor. In breast cancer, for instance, this results in an average patient getting no radiation to the heart and on average 50% less radiation to the lungs. In addition, proton therapy decreases the radiation dose to gastrointestinal structures by as much as 59% when it is compared to x-rays. Many of the proton therapy treatment plans are also shorter than traditional cancer treatment options. For instance, a proton treatment session generally takes 15 to 45 minutes. The actual time spent delivering the protons to the tumor, however, is generally only about a minute or two.

As the nation sees an increased need for these kinds of targeted approaches, it should come as no surprise that there is a need for more and more locations that offer this kind of treatment. In fact, by the beginning of the year 2015, more than 30 particle therapy centers, with a total of about 80 treatment rooms, were under construction worldwide.