With the progress of society and the improvement of the overall quality of the nation, people’s medical knowledge has gradually increased, and so has their understanding of malignant tumors, from talking about cancer to gradually realizing that some cancers are not so terrible. Nowadays, the cure rate of cancer has been greatly improved, and the cure rate of some early stage tumors has reached more than 90%, and the overall cure rate is about 45%-50%. Therefore, the understanding of the efficacy of cancer treatment helps to eliminate the fear of patients and their families. Knowing some knowledge about cancer treatment is necessary to help patients and family members choose treatment, get proper treatment as soon as possible and recover as early as possible. There are some principles that need to be followed in cancer treatment. Principle of early diagnosis and early treatment: It is to detect tumors at an early stage, which depends on two aspects, one is people’s concern about themselves and their understanding of common symptoms and manifestations of tumors, and whether they can detect and go to hospital for examination early for abnormal conditions appearing in their bodies. Secondly, it is related to the strength of the country and people’s affordability. When the country is rich and strong and people’s economic strength and medical security system are sound, early diagnosis and treatment will be realized within the whole population. Comprehensive treatment principle: The principle of comprehensive treatment is that the treatment of tumor as a whole requires the rational application of multiple treatment means to maximize the cure of tumor and improve the quality of life. At present, the main means of tumor treatment are surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Of course, the traditional medicine of our country also has unique contribution in the treatment of tumor. The comprehensive treatment we emphasize is the rational application of various treatment means, not simply using all kinds of treatment means on the same patient, which will cause some patients to be over-treated on the one hand, and the waste of national medical resources on the other. How to choose a reasonable treatment is related to the principle of individualization which will be discussed below. Some tumors require mainly surgery, some tumors require mainly radiation therapy, some tumors require mainly chemotherapy, and some tumors require a combination of two or three types of treatment. Even for the same tumor, the treatment principles are different for different stages. Some early stage tumors can be cured by single treatment, while advanced stage tumors need to adopt the principle of comprehensive treatment. For the same stage of tumor, the patient’s age, general condition, whether there is a combination of heart disease and diabetes, whether the liver and kidney function is normal, whether the lung function is normal and other factors that affect the treatment should be taken into consideration. At present, the overall cure rate of tumor is about 45-50%, of which the contribution of surgery is about 22%, radiotherapy is about 18% and chemotherapy is about 5-10%. This is in terms of the overall situation. The following talk about the role of radiation therapy in the treatment of tumors. Radiation therapy is the use of radiation (at present, most of them use high-energy rays produced by linear gas pedals, including X-rays and high-energy electron rays, and some units also use radioactive substances such as gamma-rays produced by cobalt-60). Most people do not know about radiation, and some people only know that radiation is a dangerous substance and needs to be avoided. Especially in Japan, due to the radiation from the radioactive substances produced by the atomic bomb explosion, many people suffered from such as leukemia, and the incidence of other cancers was higher than in the areas that were not exposed to the atomic bomb explosion, therefore, even in Japan, in the early years, the people did not know much about radiation therapy, and were more afraid of it. Nowadays, people use the special effect of radiation to treat tumors. From the statistics nowadays, 70% of tumor patients need to receive radiation therapy during his survival time after he has a tumor, thus it is clear that radiation therapy has an irreplaceable role in the process of tumor treatment. Some tumors can be cured by radiation therapy alone, while some tumors are mainly treated by radiation therapy. The following talks about the radiation therapy of different specific tumors respectively. Nasopharyngeal cancer: Nasopharyngeal cancer is one of the most prevalent tumors in China, especially in the southern region of China, known as “Guangdong tumor”. The disease is sensitive to radiation therapy, and radiation therapy is the first choice of treatment. Early stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma (stage I/II) can be cured by radiation therapy alone, and even in advanced stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma, radiation therapy alone can achieve very good results. The results showed that except for the slightly poorer survival results reported in Taiwan, the results in the other three regions were basically similar, with 5-year survival rates of 89.3%-95.5% for stage I, 81.8%-87% for stage II, 75%-76.9% for stage III, 58%-66.9% for stage IV, and 75-76.1% for all stages of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The 5-year survival rate of each stage was 75-76.1%. This indicates that if the correct radiotherapy technique is used for nasopharyngeal cancer (including irradiation range, dose, and position fixation), even conventional radiotherapy can achieve good results. Of course, for locally advanced nasopharyngeal cancer, current research data show that simultaneous radiotherapy + adjuvant chemotherapy can achieve better efficacy than radiotherapy alone, but radiotherapy is still the most important means in it. Early stage head and neck tumors: Early stage (I/II) head and neck tumors such as tongue cancer, buccal mucosa cancer and especially vocal laryngeal cancer can be cured by radiation therapy, and of course, early stage head and neck tumors can also be cured by surgery. Compared with surgery, radiation therapy alone can achieve exactly the same therapeutic efficacy as surgery, but the biggest advantage is that it does not cause tissue loss and functional damage to the head and neck due to surgery, although surgery can also preserve function, but its functional protection effect is not as good as radiation therapy without tissue loss. The only disadvantage of radiation therapy is that the treatment time is longer than surgical treatment, usually requiring about 7 weeks of treatment, while surgical procedures can be completed in 2-3 weeks. For patients with higher pronunciation requirements, radiation therapy is generally recommended. The 5-year survival rate of early-stage tongue cancer and vocal cord type laryngeal cancer can reach more than 90%, and even if it has recurred, it can still be treated by surgical salvage. Advanced head and neck tumors: Advanced head and neck tumors cannot be cured by radiation therapy alone, but radiation therapy still plays a very important role because the head and neck area concentrates important organs such as eyes, tongue, larynx and hypopharynx, which play important roles in vision, feeding, language and appearance. The invasion of advanced head and neck tumors is extensive and destroys many adjacent structures, so if surgery alone is used, it is bound to cause large tissue loss and damage to important functions. Research evidence shows that if simultaneous radiotherapy is used before surgery to shrink the tumor, it can make a portion of the tumor that was previously inoperable to be surgically resected become operable. A portion of the tumor can be avoided by removing the organ in which the tumor occurred, preserving organ function. The most famous one is the RTOG91-11 clinical trial organized and implemented by the American Cancer Research Collaborative Group (RTOG), which conducted a comparative trial of three treatments for locally advanced laryngeal cancer: radiotherapy alone, simultaneous radiotherapy, and induction chemotherapy + radical radiotherapy, and the results showed that the 2-year laryngeal preservation rate of the simultaneous radiotherapy group was 88%, and the survival rate of each group was about 55%, with no major differences. Early stage cervical cancer: radiation therapy is one of the main means of cervical cancer treatment and can be used at all stages. Using the technique of intracavitary + extracorporeal irradiation, the treatment of cervical cancer has achieved very good efficacy, especially early stage cervical cancer can be cured. The 5-year results of 8,056 cervical cancer radiotherapy cases reported by Cancer Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences were 93.4% for stage I, 82.7% for stage II, 63.6% for stage III, and 26.6% for stage IV. This shows that early-stage cervical cancer can be completely cured by radiation therapy. Skin cancer: Skin cancer without distant metastasis is curable by radiation therapy. With the advancement of radiation therapy technology and deeper understanding of the occurrence, growth and metastasis rules of the disease, some of the tumors which were mainly treated by surgery in the early stage can be cured by radiation therapy now. For example, if early stage lung cancer occurs in the upper lobe of the lung and is close to the external location, it has a small range of movement with breathing, and can be treated with stereotactic radiation therapy and three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy techniques to avoid open-heart surgery. Reports from Japan have shown that the treatment results achieved the same results as surgery. To sum up, radiation therapy plays a very important role in the treatment of tumors, but we cannot simply say which tumors can be cured by radiation therapy. Some early tumors can be cured and can be well protected functionally, and radiation therapy should be preferred. Some tumors first undergo synchronized chemoradiotherapy to achieve tumor shrinkage, making it possible for surgical treatment, should be treated first with non-surgical treatment and then given surgical treatment. For advanced tumors, the role of radiation therapy is part of the comprehensive treatment.