[Cancers caused by therapeutic noxae: cancer and radiotherapy]

Published reports have shown that there is an increased incidence of second malignancies, particularly sarcomas, following high dose radiotherapy in cancer treatment. However, this increased risk is very small and is relatively negligible when one considers the beneficial effects of radiotherapy in cancer treatment. This incidence of radiation induced cancer appears to be higher in certain groups of patients, such as children and patients with Hodgkin's disease. In view of scarcity of published data, controlled surveys remain necessary for the quantitative assessment of the cancer risk in various sub-groups of irradiated patients.