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Updated: Jan 18, 2026
Voluntary Breath-hold Technique for Reducing Heart Dose in Left Breast Radiotherapy
Published on: July 3, 2014
Comparison between free breathing and deep inspiration breath hold in left-sided breast cancer treatment
Hideharu Miura1,2, Yoshiko Doi3, Soichiro Ishihara1
1Hiroshima High-Precision Radiotherapy Cancer Center, Hiroshima, Japan.
Background:
This study aimed to compare the treatment plan between free breathing (FB) and deep inspiration breath-hold (DIBH) in patients with left-sided breast cancer. We aimed to investigate the dose to the heart and left lung.
Materials And Methods:
Fifty-five patients with left-sided breast cancer treated with three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy were retrospectively compared with those planned with FB and DIBH in terms of doses to the heart and left lung. The prescribed dose was 42.56 Gy which was delivered in 16 fractions.
Results:
Compared with FB, DIBH effectively reduced the mean dose to the heart by an average of 55% (2.0 Gy vs. 0.9 Gy, p < 0.001). DIBH resulted in significantly greater left lung volumes, with an average of 74.7% (980.5 cc vs. 1713.0 cc, p < 0.001). The DIBH plan delivered a significantly lower relative volume to the left lung, with an average of 1.6% at V20Gy (11.7% vs. 10.1%, p < 0.001) but delivered a significantly higher absolute irradiated volume to the left lung at V20Gy, with an average of 45.9% (118.2 cc vs. 172.5 cc, p < 0.001).
Conclusion:
DIBH is an effective treatment technique for reducing the dose to the heart and the relative irradiated left lung volume for left-sided breast cancer, although the absolute irradiated left lung volume is increased.
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