Pulmonary injury from proton and conventional radiotherapy as revealed by CT

OBJECTIVE. Although radiation therapy is used in early-stage inoperable lun g cancer, it of ten results in injury to functional lung tissue. A study wa s undertaken to determine the frequency and severity of pulmonary injury re vealed by CT in patients who had undergone conformal proton (to a limited v olume) radiation therapy. We compared these findings with those from a grou p of patients who had undergone a combination of photon and conformal proto n (to a larger volume) radiation therapy. CONCLUSION, Proton radiation therapy was associated with a lower frequency of pulmonary injury than the combined regimen. Injury correlated well with the volume of normal lung that was irradiated. Conformal proton radiation t herapy appears to be able to reduce the incidence and severity of pulmonary injury revealed by CT.