Your radiotherapy treatment plan

Depending on your type of cancer you may have radiotherapy as the only treatment, or before, during or after surgery or chemotherapy. Doctors look at the size and type of your cancer to plan your treatment. They also take your general health into account. They work together with a team of people, including medical physicists, radiologists and radiographers. So your treatment is planned to suit your needs. Your doctor will need to measure the position of the cancer and your body shape in that area to work out the total dose of radiotherapy you need.

Usually, the medical team work out the total dose and then divide it into lots of smaller doses called 'fractions'. You usually have one treatment fraction each day, but they can be given more or less often than that.

The radiotherapy team plan each person's radiotherapy very carefully, so that the highest dose is given to the cancer, and the surrounding healthy cells only have a small dose. The healthy cells can then recover. This aims to give the highest chance of curing or shrinking the cancer while reducing the risk of side effects.