By virtue of being a localized treatment modality, radiotherapy is unable to deliver a tumoricidal radiation dose to tissues outside of the irradiated field. Nevertheless, ionizing radiation may result in radiation damage mediated by a bystander like effect away from the irradiated field, but this response is likely to be modest when radiotherapy is the sole treatment modality. Over the last de...

Introduction The first medical intervention for many breast cancer patients is breast conserving surgery (BCS) and/or modified radical mastectomy (MRM). Most of these patients undergo radiation therapy, following surgery. The most common side-effect of breast radiotherapy is skin damage. In the present study, the severity of acute skin changes and the underlying causes were investigated in pati...

BACKGROUND Treatment of early-stage Hodgkin's disease is usually tailored in line with prognostic factors that allow for reductions in the amount of chemotherapy and extent of radiotherapy required for a possible cure. METHODS From 1993 to 1999, we identified 1538 patients (age, 15 to 70 years) who had untreated stage I or II supradiaphragmatic Hodgkin's disease with favorable prognostic feat...

background: in radiation therapy, peripheral dose or the dose outside the radiotherapy field, is important when anatomical structures with very low dose tolerances are involved. one of these critical organs in pelvic irradiation is testis. the amount of radiation delivered to the testes in radiotherapy must be kept as small as possible, consistent with the limit dose of this organ. the threshol...

background: we evaluated the efficacy of a simple belly-board device (bbd) designed and made in our department for reduction of small bowel inside the post-operative pelvic radiotherapy fields of rectal carcinomas. methods: a very simple bbd was designed and manufactured in our department. it was made of acrylic glass, and was 128 cm long, 40 cm wide, and 9 cm high, with a 25x25 cm square openi...

The role of radiotherapy in the management of perianal Paget's disease (PPD) is not well defined in clinical practice or within the medical literature. We present 6 cases, document the radiotherapy details and review our results. A comprehensive literature search has been undertaken attempting to identify all published cases of PPD and survey the number receiving radiotherapy. To further define...

Introduction Wedge modifiers are commonly applied in external beam radiotherapy to change the dose distribution corresponding to the body contour and to obtain a uniform dose distribution within the target volume. Since the radiation dose delivered to the target must be within ±5% of the prescribed dose, accurate dose calculation by a treatment planning system (TPS) is important. The objective ...

Introduction: In radiotherapy, treatment planning methods are evaluating and transforming every day, so precision in calculation and determination of dose delivery process is performing more important role in radiotherapy than past. In modern radiotherapy treatments, deramatically increase of small fields utilization, causes the polymeric gels has known as the most reliable dos...

Radiation enteritis is a significant complication of external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) to the pelvis, particularly in patients having high dose radiotherapy (> 80 Gy) and in those with a low pelvic peritoneal reflection allowing loops of small bowel to enter the radiation field. Laparoscopic insertion and subsequent removal of a pelvic tissue expander before and after external beam radiotherapy...