Worried about getting radiation to the chest soon after spine surgery

Hi, @mawmaws - I moved your post about radiation soon after spine surgery to both the Mayo Clinic Connect Breast Cancer group and the Spine Health group, where it was originally posted. This will help more Connect members see your question and invite responses from people with experience in either area who may be able to help.

What is your biggest concern right now about what might happen to your esophagus and your aortic valve if you have radiation soon?

@lisalucier i’m worried about having problems, swallowing or damaging my esophagus that I would need to have medication that I’m not able to take because I have so many allergies. I’m afraid I couldn’t be treated. And I’m worried it could damage my aorta and caused problems.

@mawmaws, I can understand your concerns. These are important concerns to discuss with your radiation oncologist. Be sure they understand your fears. They can share the pros and cons of treatment. They will explain how they administer radiation, including what ways they protect the heart and esophagus.

Don't go into treatment scared. Ask your questions so you can have confidence in the care you are getting.

mawmaws, Look up DIBH (deep inspiration breath hold) method, and ask your radiation oncologist if they can do this if you have to have the treatment. I had similar fears and ran across this tidbit of information that might be helpful. I ultimately decided to skip radiation myself.

@sunnydd thanks for the information I will ask and look this up. Where were you about to get radiation on your body but part? And why did you skip it? Did you have other methods to help you? That’s my problem is I don’t

@mawmaws Radiation was planned on my right breast for DCIS after lumpectomy. If you google the damage radiation can do to healthy tissue, you will see a lot of possibilities, some say rare occurrences, but the more I investigate some are not as rare as you are led to believe. Of course, cancer is very serious and needs to be slammed! But I think with conditions with lower risk, we should weigh the odds instead of jumping on to the first suggested course of treatments.

@mawmaws

Advanced eternal beam radiation systems are able to shape radiation doses tightly to tumors while protecting healthy surrounding tissue. Ask your radiation oncologist what type of equipment they use for radiation therapy.

These targeted systems use a very tightly defined area and do not radiate outside those parameters. Much of the information you see about damage to surrounding tissue and body structures is extremely outdated.

I had stage 3 breast cancer. I also have asthma. I was worried about lung damage. The scans post radiation showed zero damage. This is because my hospital had the most up to date equipment - a linear accelerator.

If your treatment facility has old equipment check to see if another location has linear accelerators or linacs. Radiation therapy works. That’s why it is used. Cancer can be cured. I have family members who lived to their mid 90s after receiving radiation for cancer. Please make an informed decision with your oncology team rather than being guided by the opinions of nonprofessionals.

@sunnydd

These are really difficult decisions.

Cancer cells can still be present after a tumor is removed. The purpose of radiation therapy is to destroy those cells. Surgery alone doesn’t remove every cancerous cell. Radiation disrupts cancer cell DNA at the microscopic level. Surgery removes the tumor mass but not microscopic cells that may be floating around in adjacent tissue. Those cancer cells can invade lymph nodes and surrounding tissue.

If you choose to specifically look up damage information you will find it. There is also massive amounts of information about survival rates. Most importantly you should make the decision based on your personal prognosis. Staging, recurrence risk, cancer type matters. If you have very early stage low risk cancer the five year survival rate may be no different with or without radiation. However, statistically the risk of recurrence may be higher without radiation. Cancer can be cured. So you may prefer to wait to choose treatment in the event of recurrence. It’s a bit like kicking the can down the road. But maybe you will never have to deal with it again. It’s a stinking crap shoot. And for me that’s the most disturbing part.

@dmr4ever thanks and I am soaking it all in. You have some good points.