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Updated: Jun 29, 2025
Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies
Published on: February 6, 2019
Comparison of radiotherapy techniques in patients with thymic epithelial tumor who underwent postoperative
Hyunseok Lee1, Dongryul Oh1, Yong Chan Ahn1
1Department of Radiation Oncology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Purpose:
This retrospective study aimed to compare clinical outcomes and dosimetric parameters between radiation therapy (RT) techniques in patients with thymic epithelial tumor (TET).
Materials And Methods:
From January 2016 to December 2020, 101 patients with TET received adjuvant RT (median, 52.8 Gy; range, 48.4 to 66.0). Three different RT techniques were compared: three-dimensional conformal RT (3D-CRT; n = 59, 58.4%), intensity-modulated RT (IMRT; n = 23, 22.8%), and proton beam therapy (PBT; n = 19, 18.8%).
Results:
The median age of the patients and the follow-up period were 55 years (range, 28 to 79) and 43.4 months (range, 7.7 to 77.2). Patients in the PBT group were of the youngest age (mean age, 45.4 years), while those in IMRT group had the largest clinical target volume (mean volume, 149.6 mL). Patients in the PBT group had a lower mean lung dose (4.4 Gy vs. 7.6 Gy vs. 10.9 Gy, respectively; p < 0.001), lower mean heart dose (5.4 Gy vs. 10.0 Gy vs. 13.1 Gy, respectively; p = 0.003), and lower mean esophageal dose than patients in the 3D-CRT and IMRT groups (6.3 Gy vs. 9.8 Gy vs. 13.5 Gy, respectively; p = 0.011). Twenty patients (19.8%) showed disease recurrence, and seven patients (6.9%) died. The differences in the survival rates between RT groups were not statistically significant.
Conclusion:
In patients with TET who underwent adjuvant RT, PBT resulted in a lower dose of exposure to adjacent organs at risk. Survival outcomes for patients in PBT group were not significantly different from those in other groups.
