Radiotherapy for cervical cancer with high-dose rate brachytherapy — correlation between tumor size, dose and failure

Comparison between In Vivo Dosimetry and Barium Contrast Technique for Prediction of Rectal Complications in High-Dose-Rate Intracavitary Radiotherapy in Cervix Cancer Patients

“…Late rectal complications are most problematic in the RT for carcinoma of the uterine cervix, and the rectal complication rate in HDR ICR is reported to be in the range of 5-45% [1,3,4,10,13,15,17,20,22,24,26,28,29]. However, since there is a wide variation in terms of treatment technique, complication grading system, and patient characteristics, it is difficult to compare our results of a 12% rate of rectal complications with those of others.…”

Intra-Arterial Infusion Chemotherapy Using Cisplatin With Radiotherapy for Stage III Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Cervix

“…In Japan, treatment results of high-dose-rate brachytherapy (mainly RT alone) for Stage III disease were as follows. Five-year overall survival for patients with Stage III disease was reported by many investigators as 47-56%, with mean of 51.2% (41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46). On the other hand, 5-year overall survival rates for low-dose-rate brachytherapy were 45-60%, with mean of 48.6% (41,42,(45)(46)(47).…”

“…To improve treatment results, the dose of intracavitary brachytherapy in our radiation schedule was chosen to be higher (6 Gy twice weekly) than in the general rules of Japan (39) and general reports (41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47). It is not clear whether the cause of good local control and/or a somewhat high rate of late complications was RT or IAIC.…”

Long term results of definitive radiotherapy for cervical carcinoma using four applications of high dose rate afterloading

“…Analyzing more than 400 patients treated with LDR brachytherapy, Pedersen et al 42 found that large lateral tumor greatest dimension, young patient age, low hemoglobin, many pregnancies, split-course strategy, and FIGO classification were independent variables for local tumor control. Ito et al, 43 in a retrospective study, found that the dose to point A and the number of HDR afterloading applications influenced the pelvic failure rate, especially in patients with medium-sized and large Stage IIIb tumors. From their data, it can be concluded that 27-30 Gy would be an optimal total afterloading dose in combination with external beam therapy.…”