What a Radiation Oncologist Does

Dr. Song introduces himself, explains the role of a radiation oncologist, and shares what a woman can expect at her first appointment with one.

What a Radiation Oncologist Does Hi, I am a radiation oncologist. My name is Dr. Paul Song. I practice at the John Wayne Cancer Institute as well as Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. Pretty much serviced patients throughout the Los Angeles area, although we do have patients flying in from other parts of the country as well. What is a radiation oncologist and what can a woman expect during her first visit with one? Well there’s three sorts of people that are involved generally in the treatment of cancer. There’s a surgeon who surgically removes the tumor or cuts out as much as they can. There’s the medical oncologist that gives chemotherapy, and the radiation oncologist provides radiation, which is another mechanism in the fight of cancer. Well once a patient has been diagnosed with cancer they make an appointment to see either myself or one of my partners here, who we are all licensed to treat patients with radiation for various types of cancers. There’s basically three different ways that we use radiation -- one is external beam radiation, which is an invisible beam of energy that’s carefully shaped to treat tumors from outside of the body in. We can also put radioactive sources directly into the tumor via something called brachytherapy where we are putting radioactive isotopes either permanently or temporarily into the tumor bed or near the tumor bed to provide a very high dose of radiation in a short distance of space without damaging any of the surrounding tissue. The other third way is, although less commonly used, is a radioactive isotope, which is usually injected in a liquid form, mostly used for recurrent lymphomas and tumors of the liver.