Osborn J
University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, UK.
Radiography (Lond). 2017 Feb;23(1):73-76. doi: 10.1016/j.radi.2016.08.008. Epub 2016 Sep 2.
Volumetric Intensity-Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT) offers solutions to the time consuming, higher monitor unit (MU) delivery of Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) for patients undergoing radiotherapy for head and neck cancer (HNC). Thus the aim was to determine whether VMAT would be beneficial for these patients. The majority of literature was planning comparative studies with only two studies on early clinical experience. Main themes arising from literature were conformity and homogeneity, organs at risk (OAR), MU and delivery time. VMAT provides plans with similar conformity, better homogeneity and results for improved sparing of OAR compared to IMRT. Thus it is clear that VMAT would be able to match the performance of IMRT plans, with the ability to treat patients in a short space of time and less MU. There is little clinical data on the side effects of VMAT, and more is needed to further evaluate the efficacy of VMAT. Overall these are encouraging results of VMAT for patients with HNC.
容积调强弧形放疗（VMAT）为头颈部癌（HNC）放疗患者解决了调强放疗（IMRT）耗时且监测单位（MU）剂量较高的问题。因此，目的是确定VMAT对这些患者是否有益。大多数文献是计划比较研究，只有两项关于早期临床经验的研究。文献中出现的主要主题是适形性和均匀性、危及器官（OAR）、MU和照射时间。与IMRT相比，VMAT提供的计划具有相似的适形性、更好的均匀性，并且在保护OAR方面效果更好。因此，很明显VMAT能够与IMRT计划的性能相匹配，能够在短时间内以更少的MU治疗患者。关于VMAT副作用的临床数据很少，需要更多数据来进一步评估VMAT的疗效。总体而言，这些结果对HNC患者来说是令人鼓舞的VMAT结果。
