Tackling breast cancer with tattoo-less radiation treatments

Reporter: Lindsey Sablan Writer: Nicholas Karsen
Published: Updated:
tattoo-less radiation
An MRI device preforming a full body scan. Credit: WINK

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and people who have received treatment know all too well about tattoo radiation treatments, now there are new methods that do not require tattoo treatments.

WINK News Anchor Lindsey Sablan sat down with Dr. Sonal Sura, a Radiation Oncologist at Genesis Care in Naples about tattoo-less radiation treatments.

“Before any patient who had a tumor over one centimeter would be kind of committed to doing chemotherapy, these tests kind of look at the genetic composition of their particular tumor,” said Sura.

Around 50% of patients receive radiation therapy, which means being permanently ink-tattooed as to help line up the radiation beams.

Dr. Sura noticed how the tattoos would affect her patient’s mental well-being, which inspired her to test a new approach to radiation treatment: tattoo-less radiation.

Surface Guided Radiation Therapy as described by Boris Mueller, Director of Radiation Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering is “a light emitted from a specialized camera and tracks a person’s skin anatomy to align the treatment in the correct direction.”

“Now we put tape stickers on them to help therapists because we’re in the initial phases of this,” said Sura. “But really, it’s the software that we have on the machine itself that can kind of use the body contour to be able to localize where we need to be.”

Dr. Sonal Sura will be joining the “Making Strides Against Breast Cancer” walk on Saturday at the North Collier Regional Park.

WINK News Anchors Lois Thome and Lindsey Sablan will emcee the event.

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