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Understanding Cancer SeriesBenchmarks articles from the selected year appear below. To view articles from previous years, use the links to the left, and select the year you wish to see.
November 18, 2009, 11:00AM
A new study which uses modeling to summarize the benefits and harms of breast cancer screening finds that regular mammography screening for women ages 50 to 74 reduces the risk of dying due to breast cancer, with a smaller benefit for women 40 to 49. False-positives tests and overdiagnosis are of concern for all ages, although false positives are more common for women in their forties, and over-diagnosis is more of a concern for older women.
October 27, 2009
Radiation therapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses beams or particles of energy to kill cancer cells and/or reduce tumor size. Radiation therapy damages cells by affecting the genetic material that controls how cells grow and divide. Even though healthy cells are sometimes destroyed during radiation therapy, the ultimate goal is to target cancerous cells only.
October 27, 2009
Aradhana Kaushal, M.D., is a staff clinician in NCI’s Radiation Oncology Branch and her work focuses on radiation treatment for prostate and pediatric cancers. Benchmarks talked with Dr. Kaushal about radiation therapy and discussed some of the techniques that are being studied at NIH.