Colorectal cancer conventional radiotherapy treatment technique with sparing the testicles

Abstract

Colorectal cancer was the third most common cancer in 2012, with higher percentage of incidence in less developed countries. In a less developed countries usually conventional radiotherapy technique is used for treatment of colorectal cancer. Using this technique testicles receive a dose from scattered radiation, due to the divergence of fields towards the testicles. We tried to re-duce a testicular dose avoiding the divergence of fields towards the testicles. For that aim 28 mail patients (mean age 51.8 years), treated with 45 Gy using the conventional 3 field technique were selected and subjected to retrospective dosimetric study using the avoiding divergence technique. Significant statistical difference was showed between the two proposed techniques (5.66 Gy, 3.53 Gy; p <0.0001) in favour of avoiding divergence technique (median of the min-imum doses to the testicles: 0.20 Gy, 0.09 Gy and the median of the maximum doses to the testicles: 15.32 Gy, 14.00 Gy). Patients with rectal cancer who are going to receive radiotherapy treatment with conventional radiotherapy tech-nique, are at risk of permanent infertility. This paper presents conventional ra-diotherapy technique, for the patients with rectal cancer which will, due to re-duction of medium testicular dose, reduce the risk of infertility.