Shahanawaj Ansari
Breast cancer has been a common malignancy in women. It is a fast growing disease across the globe, particularly in developed world. Radiotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of breast cancer specifically in breast conserving therapy. Breast conserving surgery followed by adjuvant radiation therapy of the remaining breast tissues results as the same survival rate as radical breast surgery. The aim of this study was to find out impacts of increasing number of beams on cardiac dose-distribution in Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy treatment modality. For this study 20 patients were selected of age ranging from 31 to 82 years mean age 49- years, diagnosed with left-sided breast cancer including supra-clavicular fossa in few cases. For planning target volume, the dose was prescribed as 40.05Gy in 15 fractions (2.67 Gy per fraction) for all patients. Plans were optimized to achieve 95% dose coverage (of prescribed dose) to 95% volume of planning target volume. The central area of this study was to analyze cardiac dose-distribution while irradiating left-sided breast using Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy. For this purpose, 20 patients diagnosed with left breast cancer were selected randomly. This may be concluded that increasing number of beams (7-11 Beams) in Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy technique plays an effective role in reducing high dose volume of the heart.
