Four-year-old Luke Collins lost his battle against an aggressive brain tumour last June.

His mum Fiona, from Holystone, set up a charity to ensure his name lives on, which has already raised thousands of pounds to help others affected by the condition.

To mark the anniversary of his passing, Luke’s brother Matthew released dozens of balloons during a sponsored welly wander around the Rising Sun Country Park in Benton.

Fiona said: “It was a beautiful tribute to our lovely Luke.

“Thanks to everyone involved, the support was simply breathtaking.

“It was a moving day.”

Photos from the day

Almost half of all people with cancer have radiotherapy as part of their treatment plan.

Radiotherapy is also sometimes used to treat benign (non-cancerous) tumours and other conditions, such as thyroid disease and some blood disorders.

This information focuses mainly on the use of radiotherapy as a treatment for cancer.

Why it’s used

Radiotherapy can be used, alone or in combination with chemotherapy (chemoradiotherapy), to try to cure cancers.

For people with incurable cancers, radiotherapy is a very effective way of controlling symptoms.

Radiotherapy can also be used before surgery to shrink a tumour so it’s easier to remove (known as neoadjuvant treatment), or after surgery to destroy small amounts of tumour that may be left (known as adjuvant treatment).

How it’s carried out

Radiotherapy can be given in two different ways – from outside the body (external radiotherapy) or inside the body (internal radiotherapy).

External radiotherapy usually involves using a machine called a linear accelerator, which focuses high-energy radiation beams onto the area requiring treatment. External beam radiotherapy is completely painless.

External beam radiotherapy usually involves a series of daily treatments over a number of days or weeks.

Internal radiotherapy can involve placing a small piece of radioactive material temporarily inside the body near the cancerous cells (known as brachytherapy), or the use of a radioactive liquid that’s swallowed or injected. The radiation emitted by internal radiotherapy is painless, though the procedure to insert the source can sometimes cause mild discomfort.

The type of radiotherapy you have and the length of treatment depends on the size and type of cancer, and where it is in your body.

Read more about how radiotherapy is performed.

How it works

The high-energy radiation used during radiotherapy permanently damages the DNA of cancer cells, causing them to die.

Nearby healthy tissues also suffer temporary cell damage from radiation, but these cells are usually able to repair the DNA damage and continue growing normally.

Side effects

The temporary DNA damage to normal tissues causes side effects, most of which are short-lived.

Common side effects include sore skin, tiredness and hair loss. These tend to get better within a few days or weeks of treatment finishing.

In rare cases, radiotherapy can cause significant long-term effects. For example, treatment to the genitals or pelvic region can cause permanent infertility.

Read more about the side effects of radiotherapy.

Results

Despite the side effects, radiotherapy can be a highly effective treatment for cancer. 4 out of every 10 cancer cures include radiotherapy as part of the treatment plan.

However, radiotherapy doesn’t cause cancerous tumours to shrink immediately and it can take some time for the beneficial effects to become apparent. These effects depend on the type of cancer you have, other treatments that may be given alongside it (such as chemotherapy or surgery) and how advanced the tumour is when treatment begins.

Does radiotherapy make you radioactive?

External radiotherapy doesn’t make you radioactive, as the radiation passes through your body. However, the radiation emitted by internal brachytherapy radioactive implants can be dangerous to other people while the implant is in place.

You should discuss any safety concerns you have with your care team.

This article was sourced from NHS Choices

Why chemotherapy is used

Chemotherapy is used if a cancer has spread or if there’s a risk that it will. The main aim of treatment may be:

• to try to cure cancer completely – this is known as curative chemotherapy
• to help make other treatments more effective – for example, chemotherapy can be combined with radiotherapy (where radiation is used to kill cancerous cells), or it can be used before surgery
• to reduce the risk of the cancer returning after radiotherapy or surgery
• to relieve symptoms – a cure may not be possible for advanced cancer, but chemotherapy may be used to relieve the symptoms and slow it down; this is known as palliative chemotherapy

Less commonly, chemotherapy is used to treat non-cancerous conditions. For example, low doses have been used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

How chemotherapy is used

There are many different types of chemotherapy medication, but they all work in much the same way. Depending on the type of cancer you have, you may be treated with one medicine (monotherapy) or with a combination of medicines (combination therapy).

There are several ways in which chemotherapy medication can be given, including tablets and injections directly into a vein.

The team caring for you will help come up with a treatment plan for your specific circumstances.

Read more about how chemotherapy is carried out and who can use chemotherapy.

Side effects

Chemotherapy is a very effective cancer treatment that has helped save millions of lives, but it does cause side effects.

The medicines used in chemotherapy can’t distinguish between fast-growing cancer cells and other types of fast-growing cells, such as blood cells, skin cells and the cells inside the stomach.

This means that most chemotherapy medications have a poisonous effect on the body’s cells, causing problems including:

• feeling tired and weak all the time
• feeling and being sick
• hair loss

Some people only have minimal side effects, but for most people, a course of chemotherapy can be unpleasant and upsetting.

Living with and adapting to the side effects of chemotherapy can be challenging. However, it’s important to realise that most, if not all, side effects will disappear once the treatment is complete.

There is no risk of the side effects of chemotherapy being passed to other people, including children and pregnant women, if they are in close contact with someone having chemotherapy.

Read more about the possible side effects of chemotherapy.

This article was sourced from NHS Choices

Grade – benign or malignant

Brain tumours are put into groups according to how quickly they are likely to grow. A pathologist examines the tumour cells under a microscope. The more abnormal the cells look, the more quickly the tumour is likely to grow and the higher the grade. As a rule of thumb, low grade tumours are regarded as benign and high grade as malignant.

By benign we generally mean that the tumour is relatively slow growing. It is less likely to come back after it is completely removed and is less likely to spread. It may not need treatment with chemotherapy or radiotherapy after surgery.

By malignant we generally mean that the tumour is relatively fast growing. It is likely to come back after surgery, even if it is completely removed. It may spread to other parts of the brain or spinal cord. After surgery it will need radiotherapy or chemotherapy to try and stop it coming back.

Changing from benign to malignant

In some patients, a benign tumour will develop into a malignant tumour but this is not common. It is called malignant transformation or progression to malignancy.

You can view and print the quick guides for all the pages in the About brain tumours section.

An international trial on 945 patients found treatment with ipilimumab and nivolumab stopped the cancer advancing for nearly a year in 58% of cases.

UK doctors presented the data at the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Cancer Research UK said the drugs deliver a “powerful punch” against one of the most aggressive forms of cancer.

Melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, is the sixth most common cancer in the UK – it kills more than 2,000 people in Britain each year.

Defensive boost

Harnessing the immune system is a rapidly developing field in cancer research.

The immune system is a powerful defence against infection. However, there are many “brakes” built in to stop the system attacking our own tissues.

Cancer – which is a corrupted version of healthy tissue – can take advantage of these brakes to evade assault from the immune system.

Ipilimumab, which was approved as an advanced melanoma treatment by the UK’s health service last year, and nivolumab both take the brakes off.

An international trial on 945 people showed that taking both drugs led to tumours shrinking by at least a third in 58% of patients – with the tumours stable or shrinking for an average of 11.5 months.

The figures, published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine, for ipilimumab on its own were 19% and 2.5 months.