Online ISSN: 2515-8260

COMPARISON OF DOSE VOLUME HISTOGRAMS OF GASTROINTESTINAL TRACT AND ITS TOXICITY IN CARCINOMA CERVIX PATIENTS TREATED WITH 3-DIMENSIONAL CONFORMAL RADIOTHERAPY VERSUS INTENSITY MODULATED RADIOTHERAPY

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DR ABHILASHA SINHA1 , DR RAJA P S BANIPAL2 , DR SEEMA GROVER3 , DR PARDEEP GARG4 , DR MANRAJ KANG5 , DR ROMIKANT GROVER

Abstract

Carcinoma cervix is the 4th most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and 10th overall worldwide. There were 569,847 new cases and 311,365 deaths from cervical cancer worldwide which accounts for 7.5% of total number of cancer deaths in women. 1 Cervical cancer is the 2nd most common cancer among Indian women aged 15-44 years with an estimate of 1,23,000 incident cases and 67,000 deaths in 2013 .2 The choice of treatment depends on staging. Treatment planning i.e. Radiotherapy for cervical cancer consists of EBRT (external beam radiotherapy) along with concurrent chemotherapy followed by Intracavitary irradiation (ICRT) .3 External beam radiotherapy can be provided in the form of conventional (2 D), 3 dimensional conformal and intensity modulated techniques. In late 1990s, the technique of 3D-CRT emerged as a preferred treatment for gynaecological malignancies. It uses information obtained from computed tomography scanning to identify visible tumour and organs at risk (bowel, bladder, rectum & bones). 3D-CRT is also known as forward planning as after delineation of target and organs at risk & dose prescription, the set-up of initial beam arrangement is done to deliver adequate dosage to target while respecting the dose constraints for the organs at risk. Thus, it gives a better target coverage and significantly reduces the radiation exposure to organs at risk especially urinary bladder as compared to conventional technique. However, studies showed that this technique did not appreciably reduce the amount of radiation exposure to the intestine or rectum.4

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