Prolonging deep inspiration breath-hold time to 3 min during radiotherapy, a simple solution

Deep inspiration breath-hold is an established technique to reduce heart dose during breast cancer radiotherapy. However, modern breast cancer radiotherapy techniques with lymph node irradiation often require long beam-on times of up to 5 min. Therefore, the combination with deep inspiration breath-hold (DIBH) becomes challenging. A simple support technique for longer duration deep inspiration breath-hold (L-DIBH), feasible for daily use at the radiotherapy department, is required to maximize heart sparing.

At our department, a new protocol for multiple L-DIBH of at least 2 min and 30 s was developed on 32 healthy volunteers and validated on 8 breast cancer patients during radiotherapy treatment, using a pragmatic process of iterative development, including all major stakeholders. Each participant performed 12 L-DIBHs, on 4 different days. Different methods of pre-oxygenation and voluntary hyperventilation were tested, and scored on L-DIBH duration, ease of use, and comfort.

Based on 384 L-DIBHs from 32 healthy volunteers, voluntary hyperventilation for 3 min whilst receiving high-flow nasal oxygen at 40 L/min was the most promising technique. During validation, the median L-DIBH duration in prone position of 8 breast cancer patients improved from 59 s without support to 3 min and 9 s using the technique (p < 0.001).

A new and simple L-DIBH protocol was developed feasible for daily use at the radiotherapy center.