Systemic radiotherapy of organ tumors

Therapeutic whole-body irradiation in the form of two high-dosage half-body irradiations has proved to be an effective palliative therapy for organ tumors and a good alternative to polychemotherapy. The invasive impact on the patient was found to be much lower. Variants of half-body irradiation were therapeutically applied to four groups of 78 patients with small-cell bronchogenic carcinoma. Evidence was found to the effect that the tolerance dose of the lung could be increased by less than 20 per cent, that is equal increase in tumor dosage. Average and medium survival periods were between 13 and 15 or 10.5 months for limited-disease patients, identical to the figure recorded from modern polychemotherapy. One-session irradiation was less effective on extensive-disease patients. Possible approaches to optimization of effectiveness include lung shielding, combination with 1 x 10 mg/m2 of adriamycin or with hyperthermia and limited fractionation. (author)