Program Information

Evaluation of Normal Tissue Damage in Head and Neck Cancer Treatments

H Ai

H Ai¹*, H Zhang² , (1) IU School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, (2) Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois

Presentations

SU-E-T-168 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit Hall

Purpose: To evaluate normal tissue toxicity in patients with head and neck cancer by calculating average survival fraction (SF) and equivalent uniform dose (EUD) for normal tissue cells.

Methods: 20 patients with head and neck cancer were included in this study. IMRT plans were generated using EclipseTM treatment planning system by dosimetrist following clinical radiotherapy treatment guidelines. The average SF for three different normal tissue cells of each concerned structure can be calculated from dose spectrum acquired from differential dose volume histogram (DVH) using linear quadratic model. The three types of normal tissues include radiosensitive, moderately radiosensitive and radio-resistant that represents 70%, 50% and 30% survival fractions, respectively, for a 2-Gy open field. Finally, EUDs for three types of normal tissue of each structure were calculated from average SF.

Results: The EUDs of the brainstem, spinal cord, parotid glands, brachial plexus and etc were calculated. Our analysis indicated that the brainstem can absorb as much as 14.3% of prescription dose to the tumor if the cell line is radiosensitive. In addition, as much as 16.1% and 18.3% of prescription dose were absorbed by the brainstem for moderately radiosensitive and radio-resistant cells, respectively. For the spinal cord, the EUDs reached up to 27.6%, 35.0% and 42.9% of prescribed dose for the three types of radiosensitivities respectively. Three types of normal cells for parotid glands can get up to 65.6%, 71.2% and 78.4% of prescription dose, respectively. The maximum EUDs of brachial plexsus were calculated as 75.4%, 76.4% and 76.7% of prescription for three types of normal cell lines.

Conclusion: The results indicated that EUD can be used to quantify and evaluate the radiation damage to surrounding normal tissues. Large variation of normal tissue EUDs may come from variation of target volumes and radiation beam orientations among the patients.


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