Total body irradiation--review of treatment techniques in Europe.

In treatment of acute leukaemia and other disseminated diseases, high dose total body irradiation (TBI) combined with intensive chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is used more and more successfully. Reflecting the complex clinical, biological, physical and technical situation of TBI, a large variety of TBI treatment techniques has been developed. In order to review the techniques applied in Europe and to report about common methods as well as about new ideas in TBI, a questionnaire was prepared and mailed to medical physicists in Europe responsible for TBI. The topics of this questionnaire are general information: TBI technique (beams, fields, treatment conditions); basic TBI dosimetry; physical treatment planning (patient dosimetry, heterogeneity correction, dose modification, dose homogeneity, dose precision, confirmation measurements); TBI treatment planning (dose prescription, localization, documentation, verification, in vivo dosimetry); requirements (additional staff, time, equipment) and recommendations for improvement of TBI. Most questionnaires (34/45) were returned in time with detailed information from TBI centres in 15 European countries. These data as well as results of the "Meeting of Leiden, 1982" of the "Meeting of Essen, 1985" and of the "Meeting of Toulouse, 1986" are summarized and discussed. There are many interesting methods to plan and perform exact TBI. However, anterior-posterior TBI is preferred to achieve sufficient homogeneity of dose and effective lung shielding. While the development of TBI has reached a high level of exactness, further improvement will require a better knowledge of the dose-effect relationships.