JUNIPER PUBLISHERS-OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL OF HEAD NECK & SPINE SURGERY
JUNIPER
PUBLISHERS-OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL
OF HEAD NECK & SPINE SURGERY
Did Randomized Clinical Trials (RCT) and Continually are Contributing Evidence for Progress in Radiation Oncology
Authored by Bogusław Maciejewski
Since clinical trials have been advocated as evidence based guidelines
for radiotherapy many RCTs were carried out. Can they be considered
compared with empirical studies, as a milestone progress in radiation
oncology. Large heterogenous tumor sites and stages were enrolled into
the trials on hyperoxygen therapy, radiosensitizers and altered
fractionations raise some uncertainties and criticism regarding
therapeutic gain usually reported as median end-points. Local tumor
control rates have been and still are related to the tumor TNM status,
but almost never to initial tumor volume (number of initial cancer stem
cells) whereas the effect of irradiation is cell killing, not tumor
stage killing. Many RCTs became disappointing or at least therapeutic
gain has been lower than expected. Well known trials are reviewed and
discussed. In contrary, some retrospective studies have provided
important practical information’s, i.g. tumor volume is more predictive
to design dose fractionation than T stage, overall treatment time has
been show as a strong determinant of treatment outcome. This finding
initiated series of altered fractionation trials. Alpha/beta values for
H&N tumors and cell survival curves derived from skin cancer data
were one of the first estimations based on empirical clinical studies.
Identifying very low alpha/beta for prostate cancer has attracted
stereotactic hypofractionated radiosurgery as an effective therapeutic
modality. In this review we discuss the pros and cons of the trials and
empirical studies and it looks they are complementary to one another.
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