FLASH ultra-high dose-rate radiotherapy
Delivering a whole radiation treatment in less than a tenth of a second appears to damage healthy tissue much less than the same dose given over minutes, while killing tumours just as well. No one knows why this happens.
Why it matters
If the effect is real and controllable, the same tumour dose could be given with far less injury to the patient.
Review
Favaudon et al., Ultrahigh dose-rate FLASH irradiation increases the differential response between normal and tumor tissue in mice, Science Translational Medicine, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.3008973 reference checked
Timestamp record
- Signed record
- e183d5a2701f…
- Public log
- Entry 271, in checkpoint 2,123
- In the log by
- Block 969,698, 2026-10-03
This text was in the PubPhys log by that date. The date says nothing about when the problem was first posed.