Reduced hypothalamic blood flow after radiation treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer: SPECT studies in 34 patients

To determine the effect of cranial irradiation on hypothalamic blood flow, the authors performed 44 regional cerebral blood flow studies with 99mTc hexamethyl propyleneamine oxime (HMPAO) single-photon emission CT (SPECT) on four normal volunteers and 34 patients with pathologically proved nasopharyngeal cancer. Twenty-three men and 15 women, 30-65 years old, were divided into four study groups: group 1 served as a control and consisted of four normal volunteers and six patients studied prior to cranial irradiation; group 2 patients had cranial irradiation half a year before the SPECT study (n = 12, one from group 1); group 3 patients were irradiated 1 year before the study (n = 13, three from group 1 and two from group 2); and group 4 patients were irradiated at least 5 years before SPECT imaging (n = 9). Six patients were studied twice. Quantification of the 99mTc-HMPAO brain SPECT studies was done separately by three radiologists to obtain the hypothalamus/occipital (H/O) and hypothalamus/parasagittal (H/P) ratios. Endocrinologic studies were performed in all cases and the hypothalamus-thyrotroph-thyroid, hypothalamus-gonadotroph-testis (ovary), hypothalamus-lactotroph, hypothalamus-somatotroph, and hypothalamus-corticotroph-adrenal axes were evaluated separately. They determined that regional hypothalamic blood flow was reduced after cranial irradiation in patients with nasopharyngeal cancer. The H/O ratio of groups 3 and 4 did not differ from that of group 2 (one-half year after cranial irradiation). The H/O ratio was significantly reduced 6 months and 1 year after cranial irradiation; mean ± SD = 0.5801 ± 0.0829 (p less than .025), 0.5725 ± 0.0791 (p less than .01) versus 0.6477 ± 0.0458 before cranial irradiation, respectively