It has been said that radiation therapy is a mechanically dependent specialty. With the mysterious machine room and complicated equipment, radiation therapy is like an invisible scalpel used to kill tumors. However, what you can’t see is that behind the cold equipment, there is a whole team paying. Professor Long Zhixiong, director of Wuhan Fifth Hospital Oncology Center, mentioned in an interview that the implementation of radiation therapy requires a team, which consists of oncology radiotherapists, diagnostic imaging physicians, radiophysicists, radiotherapy technicians, engineers and other components, and any kind of personnel error may have an impact on the efficacy of radiation therapy. It can be said that radiotherapy is not just a mechanical dependence. The implementation of radiotherapy requires multi-party collaboration According to Prof. Long Zhixiong, the vice-chairman of the National Precision Radiotherapy, radiotherapy is the treatment of tumors through the entry of radiation into the body, through a series of complex biological processes in vivo, so as to kill tumor cells. The advancement of equipment is based on the needs of clinical work, and there are some problems that cannot be solved by conventional treatment, so it is necessary to break through technologically. All along, the way of radiotherapy has been transforming, from two-dimensional general radiotherapy to the extensive use of three-dimensional technology and more and more image-guided technology, which constantly improves the precise killing of tumor cells and effectively protects the normal tissue effect. Experts pointed out that in some cases, the original conventional treatment methods simply can not reach the intensity required for tumor control, for example, in order not to cause fatal side effects to normal organs, can not be given to the tumor site in place of the therapeutic dose can not be rooted out of the tumor, can only be temporary control of the disease, but because of revolutionary breakthroughs in technology, it is possible to some of the previous impossible to treat the disease into a treatable. The most central part of this transformation is not the precise technical skills, but the comprehensive power of a team. There are also many unseen heroes in radiation therapy, Prof. Long Zhixiong said in the interview. How a new technology meets the prescription requirements given by doctors is supported by a strong technical team. The implementation of radiation therapy requires the collaboration of many parties, and the team consists of oncology radiotherapists, diagnostic imaging physicians, radiation physicists, radiotherapy technicians, engineers and other components, and any kind of personnel error may have an impact on the efficacy of radiation therapy. Many patients tend to have the misunderstanding that all problems can be solved with advanced machines, blindly pursuing the nominal high-end. In fact, whether the machine is high-end or not, the most important thing is that the entire medical team understands the rational use of the machine. If the team’s technical strength is not sufficient, even with high-end equipment is not helpful, so that the rational use of high-end equipment is also an important part of the team’s comprehensive strength. Different equipment has different suitable people. According to experts, in general, there are three kinds, one is the photon therapy centered on three-dimensional conformal and intensity-modulation technology, which is the mainstream technology of radiation therapy at present. The second is stereotactic radiotherapy, which is used as an important complementary treatment in many diseases, and it is difficult to solve the problem completely by stereotactic radiotherapy in most tumors. In addition, there is a higher-end equipment, proton heavy ion radiotherapy, which is mainly used for photon therapy-resistant tumors, and the equipment is still in the stage of installation and debugging. Excessive radiotherapy still exists Prof. Long Zhixiong, vice-chairman of the National Precision Radiotherapy Committee, pointed out that the phenomenon of excessive treatment still exists. Unreasonable treatment does not only exist in radiotherapy, but also in chemotherapy and endocrine therapy. How to avoid it? This requires medical staff to give patients a reasonable explanation and analysis, which is another manifestation of the team’s comprehensive strength. As radiotherapy is a relatively special treatment, the need for radiotherapy is based solely on the patient’s own medical knowledge, there is no way to judge. Take endocrine therapy as an example, the toxic side effects of endocrine therapy are much smaller than those of chemotherapy, which, on the contrary, makes the people have a misunderstanding: “How can a small piece of medicine offset the radical changes of radiotherapy?” In fact, as long as the patient’s tumor type is sensitive to this treatment, it will play a fairly good role in controlling the disease. Currently in the adjuvant endocrine therapy for breast cancer patients, the use of aromatase inhibitors such as letrozole in postmenopausal patients can be very effective in reducing the chances of recurrence and metastasis of breast cancer and prolonging the survival of patients. In addition, experts emphasize that among the integrated strengths of the team, it is indispensable to mention the file managers who are the last gate of the quality control process, and they are also an indispensable part of the whole team. Generally, a special radiotherapy summary is given to each patient at the end of the radiotherapy session. The summary covers the key technical parameters in simple language, which is intended to give the patient an overview of the disease for the doctor at the follow-up visit. In addition to this, the dossier for each patient’s radiotherapy includes some very important technical history with a large amount of graphic information that cannot be summarized in a small summary. These contents need to be kept by the department for the patients, and this file plays two roles, one is to make an important evidence for the treatment of the patient’s condition at that time, and the other is that when a part of the patients need to be treated again after recurrence and metastasis, the technical information of the year has to be called up for a better follow-up treatment.