How long (in minutes) is an average radiation treatment for breast cancer?

Answer 1

From personal experience, the actual amount of time that the radiation is penetrating the tumor/cancer is only seconds per treatment, but it takes time to align the equipment, figure the angles, etc. Expect each treatment to take about 15-20 minutes. You should have a pretreatment evaluation where they do all these measurements, record the angles, etc. that appointment make take about an hour. Over the entire treatment period you may get a total of 15-20 minutes of radiation.