[Experiences with afterloading irradiation of malignant head and neck tumors]

Since the introduction of afterloading (AL) treatment more than twenty years ago, this kind of cancer therapy has become a standard method in other medical disciplines. With the development of new devices with short-term treatment and complete protection of the medical staff, AL became interesting for head and neck cancer treatment. This paper describes the method in detail and reports on initial results of treatment. From our experience with 20 patients it can be concluded that, from a technical point of view, AL is a convincing method. Moreover, it can be expected that in future AL will play a major role as a standard method in head and neck cancer treatment, even though a variety of questions (e.g. indication, fractionation) still require an answer.