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Why recent studies relating normal tissue response to individual radiosensitivity might have failed and how new
Ekkehard Dikomey1, Kerstin Borgmann, John Peacock
1Institute of Biophysics and Radiobiology, University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. dikomey@uke..uni-hamburg.de
Purpose:
New insights into the kinetics of late complications occurring after radiation therapy indicated that all patients have a constant risk of developing late tissue complications. These observations might have a great impact on studies relating normal tissue complications to individual radiosensitivity.
Methods And Materials:
Data previously published by Peacock et al. were used for analysis. In this study, 39 breast cancer patients with severe reactions (responders) were compared with 65 matched patients showing no reactions (nonresponders). Cellular radiosensitivity as measured in vitro in terms of D(0.01) did not show significant differences between the two groups, both for high-dose-rate (5.84 +/- 0.06 vs. 5.85 +/- 0.07 Gy) and low-dose-rate (7.44 +/- 0.10 vs. 7.56 +/- 0.09 Gy) irradiation.
Results:
A theoretical distribution was calculated for the individual radiosensitivity of patients with Grade
Conclusion:
Most data published so far aiming at establishing a relationship between cellular radiosensitivity and the risk of late complications might need to be reevaluated, because the questions asked up to now were inadequate to arrive at a meaningful answer.