The Lahey Health Cancer Institute (LHCI) offers all types of colorectal cancer radiation therapy, including procedures that can greatly reduce treatment time and side effects. We are focused on not exposing you to unnecessary radiation, so we are particularly skilled at adapting our services to treat you with the least amount of radiation needed.
Short-Course Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy is mainly used for rectal cancer and is often used along with chemotherapy. Radiation therapy is offered at multiple sites throughout the Lahey Health system, so you won’t have to travel far for your treatments. LHCI has the technology to offer short-course radiation therapy to treat certain types of rectal cancer. Short-course radiation is given over a period of five days as opposed to five weeks, which has been the standard of care. This may be an option to shrink a tumor prior to having it surgically removed.
Quality and Safety Accreditation
Your safety is very important to us. Some of our quality and safety initiatives for radiation therapy include:
- Lahey uses the XECAN patient care and safety management system, which is technology that helps ensure the correct treatment of cancer patients.
- We have an overarching safety program called the Radiation Oncology Safety Initiative (ROSI), which focuses on all aspects of radiation oncology that have an effect on safety.
- We are members of the Clarity Patient Safety Organization (PSO), which operates the national Radiation Oncology Incident Learning System. By belonging to a national incident-learning database, we are able to compare our experience to that of all other participating institutions in the country, enhancing the potential for discovering significant error-prevention opportunities.
- All of the radiation therapy sites within the Lahey Health system are accredited by the American College of Radiology (ACR), which ensures quality and safety in patient care.