Stereotactic high dose fraction radiation therapy of extracranial tumors using an accelerator. Clinical experience of the first thirty-one patients.

A stereotactic body frame with a fixation device has been developed for stereotactic radiation therapy of extracranial targets, a precision localization and positioning system in analogy with the stereotactic head frames used for intracranial targets. Results of the first 42 treated tumors in 31 patients are presented. Most of the patients had solitary tumors in liver, lung or retroperitoneal space. Clinical target volumes ranged from 2 to 622 cm3 (mean 78 cm3) and minimum doses to the planning target volumes (PTV) of 7.7-30 Gy/fraction (mean 14.2 Gy) were given on 1-4 occasions to a total minimum dose to the PTVs of 7.7-45 Gy (mean 30.2 Gy) to the periphery of the PTV and total mean doses to the PTVs of 8-66 Gy (mean 41 Gy). The central part of the tumor was usually given about 50% higher dose compared to that of the periphery of the PTV by a planned inhomogeneous dose distribution. Some of the patients received stereotactic radiation therapy concomitantly to more than one target, in others new metastases were also treated which appeared during the follow-up period. We observed a local rate of no progressive disease of 80% during a follow-up period of 1.5-38 months. Fifty percent of the tumors decreased in size or disappeared.