Residual radiation-induced injury in dermal tissue: implications for retreatment

The evidence for residual radiation-induced injury has been investigated in the dermal vascular/connective tissue of pig skin at intervals of 17-52 weeks after irradiation. The primary irradiation was a single dose of 18 Gy, which represents the upper limit of "tolerance" to X irradiation of pig dermal tissue. Re-irradiation was with graded single doses of X rays in order to establish dose-effect relationships for the incidence of late ischaemic dermal necrosis of the skin; dose-effect curves obtained for previously irradiated skin were compared with those obtained using previously unirradiated skin in the same group of animals. At intervals of 17, 35 and 52 weeks after the primary treatment the resulting ED50 values for dermal necrosis were not significantly different from those obtained for previously unirradiated skin. This suggests little or no effective residual injury at these time intervals after a primary full "tolerance" dose. This conclusion was supported by the findings for the latency time for the development of dermal necrosis, which were similar in re-irradiated and previously unirradiated skin. Epithelial desquamation was not induced by the doses used in these studies, either after the primary treatment or after re-irradiation; however, the early erythema reactions seen in re-irradiated skin were markedly reduced, particularly when this was carried out after 35 and 52 weeks, when compared with skin that had not previously been irradiated. This suggests that the early erythema reaction may be a particularly poor predictor of late effects after the re-irradiation of the skin. Although the present results suggest that dermal and subcutaneous tissues may safely be retreated with a full tolerance dose at relatively early times after an initial radical treatment, caution is recommended in extrapolating these results to other late-responding normal tissues. In other tissues some persistent injury may be present even at very long time intervals after the primary treatment.