Radiosensitivity-testing procedures in cancer of the cervix

✍ Scribed by James A. Merrill; David A. Wood; Calvin Zippen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1960
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 686 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-543X
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-0142(196011/12)13:6+<113::aid-cncr2820130718>3.0.co;2-r

✦ Synopsis

A N EFFORT to improve results of treatment I in cervical cancer, attention has been directed to the study of radiosensitivity.12115~ 16 Two factors are largely responsible for this:

(1) the relative lack of over-all improvement in therapeutic results during the last 2 decades, aside from that improvement stemming from earlier diagnosis; and (2) the revival of radical surgical techniques and the development and investigation of ultraradical surgical approaches. Means are being sought with which to salvage radiation failures and to make surgery and radiation therapy complementary. An understanding of tumor and host response to radiation is important in reaching those objectives.

Radiation sensitivity of human cervical cancer is complex, relatively poorly understood, and easily confused with other factors influencing the outcome of radiation therapy. Indeed, Heyman11 denied that any cervical cancer is specifically radioresistant but rather considered that a particular tumor may be more malignant than others and that extreme malignancy rules out the possibility of successful treatment by any means, whether radictherapeutic or surgical. Inadequate radiation therapy has often been confused with radioresistance. It is important to distinguish radiosensitivity from radiocurability.

Methods of evaluating radiation response in carcinoma of the cervix have been extensively reviewed by Merrill.15 From this review, it is concluded that, at present, we do not have adequately proved, clinically useful means of predicting radiation response. Methods of evaluating radiation response, each successful in the hands of a few, include morphological examination of tumor biopsies,sI** 9 s 10 tumor cells,g~ 10, 149 19 or adjacent normal cells6. ' $ 8 , 14, 171 19 as well as histochemical and microspectrophotometric analysis of tumor cells9.