When surgical operation is difficult due the location of the tumor.

If possible, trachea cancer should be preferentially treated through surgical operation, however, implementation of an operation may be difficult in some cases. In such cases, radiotherapy may be facilitated corresponding to the treatment objective. Since radiotherapy transfers a high level of radiation, proton treatment may be applied in cases where it is difficult to protect the surrounding normal tissues from radiation exposure.

Precise radiotherapy is needed because there are main organs near the organs such as
the esophagus, heart, lungs, and spinal cord.

Trachea is located in the center of the mediastinum and nearby it the esophagus and heart are also located. Existing treatments using X-ray transfers a certain amount of radiation to the nearby lung tissues. However, proton treatment reduces the amount of radiation transferred to the normal tissues such as the esophagus, heart, lungs, and spinal cord while safely transferring a sufficient level radiation to the trachea.

[Proton Therapy compared to the X-ray treatments to treat trachea cancer]

Since trachea cancer is not a common type of cancer, there aren’t a lot of reports that show various treatment outcomes of trachea cancer patients. However, it is expected that proton treatment can transfer an adequate amount of radiation to the tumor while decreasing the radiation transferred to the surrounding normal tissues.