RADIOTHERAPY IN SWEDEN - A STUDY OF PRESENT USE IN RELATION TO THE LITERATURE AND AN ESTIMATE OF FUTURE-TRENDS

This report addresses the role of radiotherapy for treating solid tumo rs, It is based on a systematic and critical review of the scientific literature, covering close to 1 700 published studies, involving more than 700 000 patients, The report also compares current practice in ra diotherapy with scientific evidence and estimates the cost of radiothe rapy, The review of the literature shows there is a fairly solid basis for conclusions about appropriate practices in radiotherapy, There ar e about 650 studies available which are judged to be of high scientifi c quality, covering more than half a million patients, This article is a summary of the complete report, which appears as Supplement 6 and 7 of this issue. A third volume, 'Critical Issues in Radiotherapy' is a vailable at SBU.