Clinical interest in determinations of cellular radiation sensitivity

This review concludes that there are high expectations that measurements of cell survival in tumor and normal tissues at dose levels employed clinically will yield information of predictive value. Even though the absolute values for SF2 and its distribution may not be real for the in vivo situation, the measured SF2 may be of value as a means for ranking sensitivity. In actual clinical practice this would not be expected to be the only predictor employed, but rather one of several prognostic indicators. Hopefully, SF2 can be developed to be an especially powerful one. There are prospective clinical evaluations of such measurements in progress. Early results are supportive of this approach (Brock et al. 1989a). (author)