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Updated: Oct 7, 2025
Voluntary Breath-hold Technique for Reducing Heart Dose in Left Breast Radiotherapy
Published on: July 3, 2014
Lateral wedge with medial only cardiac shielding (LEMONADE) technique in left chest wall adjuvant radiotherapy
Reduan Abdullah1,2, Gokula Kumar Appalanaido2, Syadwa Abdul Shukor3
1Medical Radiation Programme, School of Health Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia.
Background:
This dosimetric study compared lateral wedge with medial only cardiac shielding (LEMONADE) technique, for left chest wall (LCW) irradiation against three other commonly used techniques.
Materials And Methods:
Dosimetric parameters of 22 consecutive LBC patients treated using the P1 (LEMONADE technique) were compared with 3 other virtually reconstructed plans : no cardiac shielding with paired wedges; P2 (paired wedges and medial only Y-direction shielding) and P3 (paired wedges and bilateral Y-direction shielding).
Results:
P1 showed better target volume (TV) coverage with the mean 90% isodose coverage of 85.59% ± 5.44 compared to 78.90% ± 8.59 and 74.22% ± 9.50 for P2 and P3, respectively. Compared to no cardiac shielding, for a 4.65% drop in TV coverage the V26Gy of heart dropped from 6.68% to a negligible 0.85% for P1. TV receiving < 30Gy is also significantly lesser for P1 compared to P2 and P3 (5.42% vs 10.64% and 15.8%), whilst there is a small difference of 2.75% between no cardiac shielding and P1.
Conclusion:
With the improvement in BC survival rate, cardiac toxicity associated with adjuvant irradiation for LBC is a major concern. P1 (LEMONADE) technique has a good compromise between cardiac sparing and target coverage and should suffice for most LCW irradiations. Furthermore, the LEMONADE technique is a simple, reproducible and involves fast planning for cardiac sparing, which is ideal for under-resourced departments with heavy workload.
