[Prophylactic irradiation of blood components with conventional radiotherapy devices]

The irradiation of blood components is supposed to be the safest way of the graft versus host reaction prophylaxis. The radiotherapy facilities and compact irradiators for blood preparations and biological materials are used for prophylactic irradiations, practically. The radiotherapy machines allow a homogeneous dose application, but need a high organizing effort. The use of compact irradiators is less complicated but the large dose differences can be found in the target volume. There is no agreement about the extent of the prophylactic dose. For radiation biology reasons the application of prophylactic doses between 15 and 50 Gy seems to be justified. A restriction of this range in favor of higher doses can be expected, when newer experimental findings are proven by clinical observations.