Interstitial High-Dose-Rate Brachytherapy in the Treatment of Base of Tongue Carcinoma

Abstract

. EBI combined with interstitial HDR brachytherapy boost result in acceptable local tumor control with low incidence of late side effects in patients with advanced disease. Fractionated sole HDR brachytherapy following tumor excision is a feasible treatment option for patients with early stage cancer and gives excellent local results.

Curative Brachytherapy for Recurrent/Residual Tongue Cancer

“…The tongue mostly consists of muscle, and because it is more radioresistant than the mandible, after the introduction of spacers second-look salvage brachytherapy became more widely indicated and there was no increase in late complications. HDR brachytherapy has become prevalent in the treatment of oral cancer and it is as safe as LDR brachytherapy [18,26], but there are few studies especially on reirradiation cases like a postbrachytherapy group in this study. LDR brachytherapy may be more appropriate, because there is a greater difference in radiation tolerance between normal mucous membrane and tumor than with HDR brachytherapy [27,28].…”

Role of Interstitial PDR Brachytherapy in the Treatment of Oral and Oropharyngeal Cancer

“…The results of low-dose-rate (LDR) brachytherapy with iridium-192 ( 192 Ir) wires using the rules of the Paris system are considered, up to now, the gold standard in the therapy of preferably small head-and-neck tumors, particularly in comparison with high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy results [20,21,25,27,28,41]. Pulsed-dose-rate (PDR) brachytherapy as a substitute for LDR brachytherapy is considered a useful option in the treatment of head-and-neck tumors, because here, the biological advantages of LDR brachytherapy meet with the technological advantages of the HDR afterloading method [21,26,35,39].…”

Preliminary Report of Pulsed Dose Rate Brachytherapy in Head-and-Neck Cancer

“…Both LDR and HDR BT have long been used for head and neck tumors [1, 3, 7, 8, 12-15, 17, 23, 25]. Recently, PDR BT was reported to be an effective and safe therapy, also performed postoperatively, as well as a unique treatment for reirradiated head-and-neck tumors [5,16,[18][19][20]24]. We also demonstrated the feasibility of PDR iBT and PDR cBT in such patients.…”