The Efficiency and Tolerance of Half-Body Irradiation (HBI) in Patients with Multiple Metastases

Abstract

HBI is an efficient method for palliation in patients with multiple painful metastases.

An Evaluation of Half-Body Irradiation in the Treatment of Widespread, Painful Metastatic Bone Disease

“…Significant pain relief after HBI is consistent with what we observed earlier [10][11][12] and with the results published by other authors 8,13,[14][15][16][17][18]20,24 . A direct comparison wirh the literature is difficult, because other authors evaluated the analgesic effect of HBI mainly as a percentage of patients with complete or partial pain relief and/or as time of pain control.…”

“…Apart from simple pharmaceutical treatment, radiotherapy is the second main treatment modality for pain caused by skeletal metastases. It may be performed as a kind of systemic treatment within the framework of nuclear medicine, using radiopharmaceuticals such as 153 samarium [1][2][3] , 89 strontium 3,4 or 186 rhenium 3 , as irradiation of involved fields (sole bone metastases) 5 , and in the form of half-body irradiation (HBI) in cases of multiple, painful bone dissemination [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] . HBI is used mostly for palliation in painful skeletal dissemination, but on rare occasions it is performed as a palliative treatment of chemoresistant lym-phomas 21,22 , myelomas 23,24 or, with autologous hemopoietic stem cell transplantation, as a consolidation of primary treatment in some advanced solid tumors (neuroblastoma) 25 .…”

Axilladissektion oder Axillabestrahlung bei postmenopausalen Patientinnen mit Mammakarzinom?

“…Aufgrund ihrer Effizienz und geringen Nebenwirkung wird sie bis in die Endphase der Erkrankung eingesetzt [13,32]. Im Widerspruch zu dieser radioonkologischen Erfahrung wird die Radiatio der Axilla oft als wirkungslos und folgenschwer eingestuft.…”

Results of a Nationwide Survey on Radiotherapy of Bone Metastases in Germany

“…Radiotherapy is also indicated after operations to avoid local recurrence. The goals of treatment are to improve and maintain the quality of life via the alleviation of pain, increase in mobility, functional improvements, increase in well-being, facilitation of nursing care, and arrest of local tumor growth [4,9,16,19,22].…”