Advanced-technology radiation therapy for bone sarcomas.

BACKGROUND: Bone sarcomas are rare primary tumors. Radiation therapy (RT) can be useful in securing local control in cases where negative surgical margins cannot be obtained or where tumors are not resected. Recent technical advances in RT offer the opportunity to deliver radiation to these tumors with higher precision, thus allowing higher doses to the tumor target with lower doses to critical normal tissues, which can improve local tumor control and/or reduce treatment-related morbidity.
METHODS: The authors conducted a survey of recent technical developments that have been applied to the RT for bone sarcomas.
RESULTS: RT techniques that show promise include intensity-modulated photon radiation therapy, 3-D conformal proton RT, intensity-modulated proton RT, heavy charged-particle RT, intraoperative RT, and brachytherapy. All of these techniques permit the delivery of higher radiation doses to the target and less dose to normal tissue than had been possible with conventional 3-D conformal radiation techniques. Protons deliver substantially less dose to normal tissues than photons.
CONCLUSIONS: Data from clinical studies using these advanced radiation techniques suggest that they can improve the therapeutic ratio (the ratio of local control efficacy to the risk of complications). This is expected to improve the treatment outcome for these challenging tumors.