When more medicine isn’t always better: High costs of unnecessary radiation for terminal cancer patients
Thursday, October 10, 2013 - 10:00
in Health & Medicine
For cancer patients dealing with the pain of tumors that have spread to their bones, doctors typically recommend radiation as a palliative therapy. But as in many areas of medicine, more of this treatment isn’t actually better. Medical evidence over the past decade has demonstrated that patients with terminal cancer who receive a single session of radiotherapy get just as much pain relief as those who receive multiple treatments.