Cancerbackup: Radiotherapy

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Radiotherapy for acute myeloid leukaemia

Radiotherapy treats cancer by using high-energy rays to destroy the cancer cells, while doing as little harm as possible to normal cells.

If you need a bone marrow or stem cell transplant you may have a type of radiotherapy called total body irradiation, or TBI. Radiotherapy is given to the whole body to destroy the bone marrow cells. This is described in our section on stem cell and bone marrow transplants.


Content last reviewed: 01 June 2007
Page last modified: 30 August 2007

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