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The risk of chronic lesions after radiation therapy in patients with breast cancer
KŘÍŽOVÁ, Jana
Breast carcinoma is the most common cancer in women. In 2009, 5,975 new cases were diagnosed in the Czech Republic. One of the main treatment modalities is radiotherapy, which, besides bringing treatment effects, may also cause post-radiation changes that significantly influence patients? quality of life. The work focuses on monitoring the occurrence of post-radiation changes following radiotherapy as part of breast carcinoma treatment ? chronic radiodermatitis, hypodermic fibrosis and lymphedema, all at Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute Brno. After the end of radiotherapeutic treatment these changes are monitored by the physicians during regular checks and classified on the RTOG/EORTC scale. I used a set of 98 patients (97 women and 1 man) treated at the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute Brno between 1998 and 2009 who suffered from the mentioned post-radiation changes. The data was assessed upon the purpose, radiation equipment used for the radiotherapy, and the degree of the studied conditions. Occurrence of lymphedema prior to radiotherapy was statistically analysed as well. All the patients received the same dose of 50 Gy with a standard fractionation scheme of 25 fractions by 2 Gy, and therefore no evaluation of coincidence of the applied dose with the risk of chronic changes occurrence was possible. Consequent changes occurred in 74 % of the studied patients. Statistics shows that patients who received radiation treatment of mamma or chest and regional lymph nodes were at higher risk of suffering chronic changes to the skin and higher risk of lymphedema, but at lower risk of hypodermic fibrosis.
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