Hoekstra H J, Sindelar W F, Kinsella T J, Mehta D M
Department of Surgical Oncology, Groningen University Hospital, The Netherlands.
Radiat Res. 1989 Dec;120(3):508-15.
In a canine model the tolerance of normal and surgically manipulated tissue to intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) was investigated to provide guidelines for the clinical use of IORT in human cancer patients. A dose of 20 Gy IORT, with or without external beam radiotherapy, was generally well tolerated without significant increased treatment morbidity. Higher doses of IORT (over 30 Gy) have produced radiation-induced sarcomas in some animals followed over a long period. Therefore IORT should be used only in human cancer patients in well controlled studies, in which complications are well documented, and the possibility of radiation-induced malignancies in long-term survival should be considered.
