Mitigating Oral Mucositis in Proton Therapy with Advanced Dose-, LET- and Organ Volume-based Constraints

Oral mucositis is one of the most frequent and impairing acute adverse effects of radiotherapy for head and neck malignancies, occurring in almost 100% of patients. Although proton therapy provides a superior sparing of the oral cavity compared to photon therapy, up to 70% of patients still experience oral mucositis. Currently, the only countermeasure for mitigating this sequela is to set dose limits in the oral cavity, whose values have been derived from photon therapy data using the Relative Biological Effectiveness (RBE) as a scaling factor.

Source: International Journal of Radiation Oncology * Biology * Physics - March 14, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: G. Cartechini, S. Liu, C. Washington, S. Samuels, C. La Tessa Tags: 188 Source Type: research