Abstract
Progress of cancer therapies has prolonged the life expectancy of children with malignant tumors,which has led to the need for measures on late complications. In the oral area, anomalies such as tooth agenesis, microdontia, foreshortening of roots, delayed or arrested tooth development, and dentofacial deformities are reported as late complications after radiotherapy. The severity of these anomalies is related to dose of radiation and patient age. Therefore it is urgently required to develop a devise, attenuator, to protect nontarget growing orofacial tissues and organs during radiotherapy for children. In this study, we studied the efficiency of electron beam attenuation of candidate materials. The ability for effective attenuation defined decrement more than 99.50%. We found that a 2.0 mm thick lead plate shuts more than 99.54% of the electron beam. Among all combinations of the lead plate with dental materials (acryl, polycarbonate, ethylene-vinyl) which covered both sides of the plate we observed that 99.62% attenuation is obtained with 3.0 mm thick acryl on both sides. Calculations showed that the estimated electron beam exposure of the nontarget tissues of a patient wearing the attenuator with this combination is at maximum 0.17 Gy . These results suggest that wearing the attenuator during radiotherapy can support dental tissues and organs of the patient to follow normal developmental process.
