Adjuvant radiotherapy of breast cancer - is partial breast irradiation sufficient?

Abstract

Partial breast irradiation is a relatively novel approach in adjuvant breast cancer radiotherapy. It involves administration of irradiation to a part of the breast, as opposed to the standard practice of irradiation of the whole breast. This method allows delivery of higher radiation dose to smaller volumes, and in shorter period of time. It can be delivered via standard linear accelerators, brachytherapy, or via mobile accelerator units which allow the delivery of a single dose of radiation to the tumor bed intraoperatively. However, the use of partial breast irradiation in standard clinical practice is still controversial. The level of evidence that supports its equality to the whole breast irradiation remains limited. While the results of some prospective randomized trials indicate its applicability in certain, highly selected patients, longer follow-up of patients is necessary to draw defi nitive conclusions.

Breast cancer radiotherapy - changes in fractionation schemes through decades

“…The abovementioned was confirmed in several meta-analyses exploring the data of thousands of patients included in a number of randomized clinical trials (1,2). Adjuvant breast cancer radiotherapy is still an area of investigation, as we reported in our previous review papers (3,4). Different radiotherapy techniques, different target volumes (partial breast irradiation vs. whole breast irradiation), and different fractionation schedules are being investigated.…”