II Clinic of Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy

II Clinic of  Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy specializes in treatment of lung and other cancers of the chest, gastrointestinal tract, urinary tract, and male genital tract cancers.  The team includes radiation oncologists, clinical oncologists and psychologists.  To optimize the lung cancer diagnostic and therapeutic process we routinely consult our cases with thoracic surgeons by means of a teleconference with the Thoracic Surgery Clinic in Zakopane.  We provide radiotherapy, chemo-radiotherapy and stereotactic radiotherapy – the modern method of early lung cancer treatment in inoperable patients.  The Clinic has extensive experience in prostate cancer:  for early stage patients we choose treatment by CyberKnife; for patients presenting advanced stage prostate cancer we apply combined treatment of brachytherapy and radiotherapy.  One of our major fields of research is perfecting rectal cancer treatment by means of preoperative radiotherapy or radiochemotherapy in close cooperation with the Surgery Clinic of our Institute.  We routinely treat anal cancers and unresectable esophageal cancers applying concurrent chemoradiotherapy.  We use systemic treatment with both cytostatics and molecular target chemotherapy.

Teleradiotherapy represents a preferred form of treatment, i.e. treatment with ionizing radiation from a source located outside the patient’s body.  Stereotactic radiotherapy is a special type of such a therapy – a modern method of irradiation delivered by, among others, CyberKnife.  Radiotherapy is usually combined with surgical treatment, chemotherapy or hormonal therapy in various modalities.  Depending on clinical indications, different methods may be used, such as radical radiotherapy, preoperative or postoperative radiotherapy, radical chemoradiotherapy, preoperative or postoperative, and radiotherapy combined with hormonal therapy or radiotherapy combined with brachytherapy.  Whenever clinically justified, radiotherapy planning is aided by PET-CT imaging to improve treatment accuracy.  More detailed information about the treatment techniques may be found by going to the website of  the Outpatient Radiotherapy Clinic with which we closely cooperate.
 

Oncologic treatment may cause various side effects, specific to each method and tumor localization.  During the patient’s hospital stay, doctors make daily rounds and the patients also remain under the constant care of our nursing team.  Patients may suffer nausea, loss of body weight, general weakness, immunodeficiency as well as problems with the digestive, pulmonary or urinary tract.  The implemented treatment typically alleviates the symptoms in most patients; however, taking into consideration how stressful oncologic treatment may be, patients are also offered psychological support