1982 Volume 22 Issue 4 Pages 449-457
In order to improve the clinical results of postoperative radiation therapy for lung cancer, the clinical results of 145 stage I-III lung cancer cases receiving external high energy radiation treatment of more than 3000 rad to remaining lesions post-operatively at the National Cancer Center in Tokyo during the last 15 years were investigated. The 5 year survival rate of the cases were 15.6% while in 21.1% and 48.7% the main cause of death was local failure and distant metastases, respectively. Most cases developing postradiation complications were over 50 years old and had more than 5 000 rad irradiation.
According to these results, develpment of more effective, more selective and more reasonable irradiation techniques and more precise local diagnostic procedure are necessary in postoperative radiotherapy to obtain a better local control rate.
In this paper, recently developed treatment postoperative radiotherapy techniques were also introduced, i.e. irradiation combined with chemotherapy, intraoperative applications of afterloading small source irradiation technique with 192Ir seeds to irradiate small remaining lesions in the chest cavity and a semi-conductor radiation detector for detection of remaining lesions in the bronchial stump after resection of the lung using 32P.
