The role of brachytherapy in the radiation treatment of malignant tumours.

The magnitude of brachytherapy doses depends on the applied dose rates: high-dose-rate or low-dose-rate techniques. Brachytherapy is usually performed as a complementary modality with megavoltage external beam therapy, but it is also used preoperatively for cancers of the uterine cervix and corpus. The most common localization is reviewed in this paper with special regard to the indications, treatment methods and prognosis of curing for rectal and breast cancer.