Reason Why Radiation Therapy in Breast Cancer, A Need For New Technologies

Reason Why Radiation Therapy in Breast Cancer, A Need For New Technologies ~ Heal the main goal of cancer treatment and improve survival. Radiotherapy plays an important role in breast cancer as it helps in achieving both objectives of cancer treatment.

The radiation therapy improves survival?

The treatment of breast cancer has been an evolutionary process over the years. In those days, extensive surgical removal of the breast and around the standard care for breast cancer has been considered. Improved survival was achieved by the addition of systemic chemotherapy in breast cancer management protocol.

Oncologists was an interesting question: How could improve RADIATION local control and ALWAYS survive effect in patients with breast cancer? The authority in research on breast cancer in the world - The answer was given in an elegant analysis Trial Followings group of early breast cancer workers (EBCTCG). It was observed that the radiation patterns it was able to produce a decrease by two-thirds in local recurrence and reduces the annual death rate from breast cancer to 13.2%. But an increase of non-cancer deaths breast is detected, the. In this analysis, this meant that the recovery of the advantage of radiotherapy offset due to complications of radiotherapy. The leading cause of deaths from breast cancer was found to be heart disease, which means that the radiation caused randomly in the heart, increased incidence of heart disease, is delivered. Another important observation of this group said it studied - had noticed an increase in deaths from breast cancer is not primarily to patients to technique and previous radiotherapy apparatus, with no clear distinction of treatment volume and organs risk used as heart, lung and breast opposite.

Contemporary radiation therapy with less cardiovascular morbidity and mortality associated with the previously known as radiation. Currently, a large number of centers CT scan planning treatment (CT) and the dose of radiation to prevent mold using three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy IMRT that the underlying heart for treatment. Furthermore, the integration of treatment with electron beam radiation therapy protocols for breast cancer allows safe delivery of higher doses of radiation to the patient. In fact, a re-analysis of data from the group EBCTCG Dr. Van Steene found to postoperative radiation therapy improves survival of breast cancer-specific and overall survival to 12.4%, as used in modern equipment and radiotherapy techniques.

Breast conservation: importance of radiotherapy

Another active area of ​​development of breast cancer is breast conserving device as a standard treatment for early breast cancer. The Conference Development Consent of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the treatment of patients with invasive breast cancer at an early stage, rather than in June 1990, recommended breast conservation treatment for most women with breast cancer in stage I or II .

The following issues were on the Conference underlined:

Local Control:

Local control is an important goal of breast conservation therapy. The incidence of local recurrence is low to obtain an optimum therapy for breast conservation in suitably selected patients.

Aesthetic result:

An object in the primary treatment of breast cancer is very attractive to produce consistent with the achievement of local / regional control. Large long cosmetic outcome requires integration of careful and accurate surgery radiotherapy techniques.

A variety of factors have a significant influence on the choice of primary treatment. These include logistics and emotional aspects, personal economic issues and the proximity and access to appropriate medical care.

Radiotherapy:

The Conference was recommended radiotherapy after breast conservation surgery. The treatment design should minimize exposure heart and lungs radiation can be performed to achieve a uniform dose to the tumor therapy. Elevated radiation should be used with electron beam or implant doses of 1000-1500 cGy.

Obviously, the availability of suitable facilities for radiotherapy is considered a prerequisite for maintaining the breast, since it is necessary to deliver the correct doses of radiation disease recurrence maintained chest to prevent. The dynamics is the treatment with electron beam radiotherapy Conformal gave 3-D, radiation modulated by the intensity, interstitial brachytherapy, intraoperative radiotherapy. All these techniques emphasize the importance of modern techniques and equipment such as linear accelerators with multileaf collimators, designing systems of therapy, interstitial brachytherapy facilities and so on.

The future:

Recent advances in radiation oncology field as imaging guided radiation with respiratory gated, 4-D Radiotherapy and dynamic adaptive radiation to further improve the results seem promising. Contemporary IMRT delivery methods such as tortuous tomothetrapy hardly helped in preparing the dose gradients. PET detection Guided goal is another exciting area of ​​research. Innovations such as MammoSite have actively feed the research on technical information and interstitial brachytherapy in breast cancer.

Another approach for the treatment of breast cancer has partial breast irradiation (APBI) accelerated. Finally, modern radiation therapy is an essential ingredient for the treatment multimodality breast cancer, because it is not only the results of treatment adds, but also complements the conservation of organs and therefore the quality of life of patients with breast cancer affects.