COVID-19: What people with cancer need to know

Welcome to Radiation Oncology

Welcome Message From Dr. Jean L. Wright, Chair

I am thrilled to join the University of North Carolina as Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology. I look forward to leading the department into its next great era, after decades of successful leadership by prior chairs, Dr. Joel Tepper, Dr. Larry Marks, and Interim Chair Dr. Ellen Jones. We offer a comprehensive array of treatments to provide the very best care for our patients, including innovative approaches available through clinical trials and cutting-edge research. We train tomorrow’s leaders and caregivers through medical physics and radiation oncology residency programs, as well as training programs for radiation therapists and dosimetrists. As a part of the UNC School of Medicine, we are dedicated to improving the health and well-being of North Carolinians and others we serve. Together, our multidisciplinary team works toward the common goals of providing the best and safest care for our patients today, and developing better cancer treatments for the future.

I invite you to explore our web page and get to know our team of world-class clinicians, educators, and researchers. Our clinical team spans nine campuses across North Carolina. The Chapel Hill campus is housed in the North Carolina Cancer Hospital, where we offer the following services:

• External Beam Radiation Therapy: Using state-of-the-art linear accelerators, X-rays or electrons are focused on the tumor while trying to avoid damage to surrounding normal tissues.
• Intensity-Modulated and Image-Guided Radiation Therapy: External beam radiation therapy that allows radiation doses to be delivered to the tumor more accurately, while further minimizing damage to surrounding normal tissues.
• Tomotherapy: External beam radiation therapy in which the radiation is delivered to the tumor in a series of small slices, rather than irradiating the whole tumor at once. This improves accuracy even more and further minimizes damage to surrounding normal tissues.
• CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery: External beam radiation therapy that allows physicians to irradiate small tumors virtually anywhere in the body with the highest level of precision. This is useful because some tumors can’t be removed by traditional surgery without involving significant risks.
• Mobetron Intraoperative Radiotherapy: Intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) consists of a large single dose of electrons generated by a portable linear accelerator and delivered during cancer surgery through the surgical incision. The goal of IORT is to treat the “tumor bed”—the local area where the tumor used to be before it was surgically removed—which could still contain microscopic deposits of cancer. Normal tissue damage is minimized by either moving nearby organs out of the radiation field, or else shielding them from the radiation exposure.
• Brachytherapy: The use of radioactive capsules, wires or “seeds” that are implanted in and around a patient’s tumor, either temporarily or permanently. Brachytherapy is commonly used for gynecologic and genitourinary cancers. The brachytherapy room provides live imaging of the treatment area as the radioactive materials are implanted, allowing procedures to be completed more quickly and accurately.

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