The term “brachy” means short distance. Brachytherapy is a type of radiation therapy that refers to the use of sealed radioactive sources inside or at a short distance from a malignancy.

Low Dose Rate Brachytherapy (LDR)

Radioactive sources have been used in medicine since the discovery of radioactivity. Classically, because of technical difficulties in the production of high intensity sources, most of the experience accumulated in the treatment of cancer with this modality of treatment was obtained with low intensity sources, giving rise to the term low dose rate brachytherapy.

This form of therapy is usually performed in a hospital setting, requiring radioactive "seeds" to be surgically implanted in or near the patient’s tumor, delivering a higher dose of radiation to tumor and keeping the dose to the normal surrounding tissues to a minimum, which is not possible if you gave the same dose with external beam therapy.

High Dose Rate Brachytherapy (HDR)

Devices called high-dose rate remote afterloading machines allow radiation oncologists to complete brachytherapy quickly, in about 10 to 20 minutes.  Powerful radioactive sources travel through small tubes called catheters to the tumor for the amount of time prescribed by your radiation oncologist.  You may be able to go home shortly after the procedure.  Depending on the area treated, you may receive several treatments over a number of days.