Rapid course radiation therapy vs. more standard treatment: a randomized trial for bone metastases.

Purpose: In a prospective randomized trial we examined whether radiotherapy of painful bone metastases can be shortened using larger single doses without impairing effectivity.

Methods And Materials: One hundred patients with painful bone metastases having no prior surgical intervention or treatment with x-ray therapy and had a median follow-up of 12 months were analyzed. The primary tumor was located in the breast in 43%, in the lung in 24%, and in the prostate in 14%.

[Choroid metastases in metastatic breast cancer--a rare metastatic site].

Between 1985 and 1989, four patients with uvea metastases of breast cancers were treated in the Dept. of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of the University of the Saar, Medical School, in Homburg/Saar. One of these patients developed binocular metastases.

[Hyperfractionated irradiation of esophageal cancer. Initial results of a pilot study].

A group of 21 patients with esophagus carcinomas was submitted to hyperfractionated irradiation with a total reference dose of 65 Gy, applied in 50 fractions over five weeks. Generally, the irradiation was well tolerated. About 49% of the patients are alive one year later.

[Treatment of radiation pneumonitis with curative intent--a review].

Therapeutic assays with medicaments intended for the healing of radiopneumonitis have a long tradition. Numerous medicaments have been assayed in men and animals during the last thirty years without having reached any lasting positive results. In the end, the fibrotic stage of this radiogenic side effect has always been refractory.