Deep inspiration breath-hold technique in left-sided breast cancer radiation therapy: Evaluating cardiac contact distance as a predictor of cardiac exposure for patient selection.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of voluntary deep inspiration breath-hold (DIBH) over a free-breathing (FB) technique to minimize cardiac radiation exposure in radiation therapy of left-sided breast cancer. Also, to better select patients for DIBH, the correlation between cardiac contact distance (CCD) and cardiac dose was assessed.

Methods And Materials: Thirty-five patients with left-sided breast cancer underwent DIBH and FB planning computed tomography scans, and the 2 plans were compared.