Present status and prospects of internal radiotherapy

The experience of the last 40 years has shown that internal radiotherapy generally produces palliative results for macroscopic tumor targets and curative results for the microscopic ones. The short-term prospects for internal radiotherapy concern essentially palliative treatment of painful bone metastases of osteophilic cancers (breast or prostate) for antalgic purposes. Radioimmunotherapy may ultimately play a determinant role in the curative treatment of microscopic residual disease resulting from several types of radiosensitive cancer (lymphoma, neuroblastoma or small-cell lung cancer). In all cases, internal radiotherapy should be integrated into a coherent strategy associating complementary therapeutic modalities. (author). 16 refs., 2 figs