ABSTRACT
Approximately 41% of men and women born in the United States today will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetime. In the past year, this amounted to 1,500,000 people in the United States being diagnosed with cancer. Unfortunately, although the science and technology of cancer treatments is continually advancing, we still have a long way to go. Currently, the overall 5-year survival of cancer patients, compared with the general population, is only 65%, although this does vary widely depending on the type of cancer. In 2010, almost 600,000 people in the United States died of cancer. ere is, therefore, clearly a huge need for dramatic improvements in cancer prevention and cure. e focus of this volume is to describe the dierent applications of nanotechnology in radiation oncology, each with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes. e focus of this rst chapter is to introduce the reader to the basic principles of radiation therapy of cancers.
