Proton beam therapy

Together with surgery and systemic treatment, radiotherapy constitutes one of the three pillars of cancer treatment. Tremendous technological development of particle accelerators has led to the implementation of proton beam therapy as the treatment of choice for a specific group of patients with cancer, especially children. Competition among several manufacturers has contributed to the lowering of prices of proton accelerator, which have lately also become accessible to less wealthy countries. The complexity of proton therapy, size of accelerators, and lingering high prices are the three main reasons for a relatively low number of proton therapy centres around the world, and the fact that there are no such centres in Slovenia as of yet. While proton therapy is a valid treatment of choice for the particular patient group, it is still difficult to determine unambiguously which patients would benefit from it most. From a strictly physical point of view, the dosimetric properties of proton beams differ significantly from those of photons. and are advantageous compared to photons. Protons traverse the tissue and deposit only a small part of their energy until they reach a certain depth where nearly all of their energy is deposited, while photons deposit their energy almost entirely in the first few centimetres of the tissue exposed to the beams. Like many other countries, Slovenia is at a crossing where it has to decide on the time and mode of photon therapy implementation, which will have to be carried out in a prompt and transparent manner.