Does IMRT increase the peripheral radiation dose? A comparison of treatment plans 2000 and 2010.

It has been reported in several papers and textbooks that IMRT treatments increase the peripheral dose in comparison with non-IMRT fields. But in clinical practice not only open fields have been used in the pre-IMRT era, but also fields with physical wedges or composed fields. The aim of this work is to test the hypothesis of increased peripheral dose when IMRT is used compared to standard conformal radiotherapy.