Total body irradiation before bone marrow transplantation: a review

An increasing number of centres are undertaking BMT and many different techniques are being evolved for TBI. The critical factors to be considered are total dose and dose rate. Conventional single treatments of 1000 cGy (rad) at low dose rates are effective and safe, but alternative fractionated regimes being explored. As few groups treat enough patients to be able to conduct a randomised study, careful and standardised recording of technique and doses given will be important in determining optimum ways of delivering TBI.