Possible Role of Adjuvant rapid arc radiotherapy in Breast Cancer Treatment

Abstract

Breast cancer is the leading diagnosed cancer and the second most common cause of cancer mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. RapidArc has been employed for tumors in several other parts of the body, eg, in breast canceThere are two main forms of arc-based therapies: tomotherapy and volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). Tomotherapy (i.e. “slice therapy”) machines can be considered to be a combination of a CT scanner and a linear accelerator that can deliver the radiation in a fan-shaped distribution, similar to CT imaging with a continuously rotating radiation source, while the patient is moved through the machine. Tomotherapy techniques can be subdivided into axial or serial tomotherapy (where the radiation is delivered slice by slice) or helical tomotherapy (HT) (where the radiation is delivered in a continuous spiral). There is limited data on axial tomotherapy in comparison with fixed field IMRT. HT has been evaluated in a variety of tumour sites and it can generally achieve either similar or improved dose distributions compared with fixed field IMRT, with variable results on treatment time comparisonsr. In these studies, it was a common finding that RapidArc was more efficient for dose delivery, while with regard to treatment planning and dose conformity, RapidArc provided considerable added value. These studies emphasize that RapidArc and, in wider terms, VMAT techniques can be considered a possible alternative to traditional irradiation methods for the cure of several cancers