[Pathogenesis and pathophysiology of injuries after radiotherapy of neoplasms]

The dose which can be given in radiotherapy and, thus, the chance of cancer control is primarily limited by the risk of producing severe chronic side effects in the uninvolved adjacent normal tissues. Only recently the challenge that chronic radiation injury poses to radiobiology has been fully acknowledged and experimental research in laboratory animals has started. Still, very little is known about the pathogenesis, the pathophysiology and the pathology of chronic normal tissue injury of most organs.