The Role of Palliative Radiotherapy in Bleeding from Locally Advanced Gastrointestinal Tumors
Authors:
P. Navrátilová 1; L. Hynková 2; P. Šlampa 2
Authors place of work:
Mobilní hospic Ondrášek, o. p. s., Ostrava
1; Klinika radiační onkologie LF MU, Masarykův onkologický ústav, Brno
2
Published in the journal:
Klin Onkol 2017; 30(6): 433-436
Category:
Review
doi:
https://doi.org/10.14735/amko2017433
Summary
Background:
Patients with locally advanced gastrointestinal tumors present with typical symptoms including pain, obstructive problems with passage disorders and bleeding. The last of them negatively affects their quality of life and is potentially lethal. Palliative radiotherapy is used in hemostatic indication to control bleeding from locally advanced or recurrent inoperable gastrointestinal tumors for many years.
Purpose:
This review summarizes information and available literature about mechanisms, efficiency and toxicity of palliative radiotherapy used in hemostatic indication, separately for each part of the digestive system. Although most of the published studies are retrospective, all of them show fast, effective and technically safe control of bleeding with minimal risk of toxicity and show an improvement of quality of life. Hypofractionated radiotherapy, with a smaller number of high doses, seems to be the appropriate palliative fractionation schedule. The higher daily dose is associated with faster initiation of hemostatic effect, while few radiotherapy treatment sessions are comfortable for patients; both of them meet the basic principles of state-of-the-art palliative care. In addition to external beam radiotherapy, high dose rate brachytherapy represents another possibility in this indication, especially for locally advanced inoperable anal and rectal cancer. Brachytherapy is simple, practical and most importantly a one-time procedure with high local effect without significant toxicity.
Conclusion:
Radiotherapy is an important treatment possibility for palliative care of bleeding from locally advanced inoperable gastrointestinal cancers. Future prospective studies employing modern radiotherapeutic techniques and procedures are needed to provide consistent and clear evidence in order to weigh risks against benefits of palliative hemostatic radiotherapy in current daily clinical practice.
Key words:
locally advanced gastrointestinal tumors – bleeding – palliative radiotherapy
The authors declare they have no potential conflicts of interest concerning drugs, products, or services used in the study.
The Editorial Board declares that the manuscript met the ICMJE recommendation for biomedical papers.
Submitted:
8. 5. 2017
Accepted:
23. 7. 2017
Zdroje
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Štítky
Paediatric clinical oncology Surgery Clinical oncologyČlánok vyšiel v časopise
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