Medical Services
Total Body Irradiation
Total Body Irradiation (TBI)
Memorial Cancer Institute’s radiation oncology department works closely with Memorial’s multidisciplinary Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) program to offer Total Body Irradiation (TBI), a type of radiation therapy that is delivered to the entire body. TBI uses high-energy X-rays to destroy or suppress the patient's immune system to allow donor's blood stem cells to grow.
This therapy is usually indicated as part of a conditioning regimen to prepare leukemia or lymphoma patients for an allogeneic (donor) stem cell/bone marrow transplant. It is often used in conjunction with high-dose chemotherapy.
TBI is administered to a patient for a variety of reasons, including:
- To destroy residual cancer cells
- To suppress the immune response by eliminating the patient’s white blood cells and lymphocytes so the individual’s immune system won’t destroy these donor cells
