Optimise radiotherapy today for a better tomorrow
When eradicating cancer cells with radiotherapy, the radiation dose delivered to surrounding normal healthy tissue must be kept in mind; the harmful effects are becoming all the more evident with cancer survivors living longer. The 'Early and late health risks to normal/healthy tissues from the use of existing and emerging techniques for radiation therapy' (Allegro) project is working to mark gaps in knowledge, evaluate current methods of measuring and calculating dose, and recommend future directions for research, data collection and technological developments. Bringing together 13 partners from 8 European countries, Allegro is collecting information from databases of radiation treatments and outcomes. The data will be used to study models of normal tissue damage and the emergence of radiation-induced second cancer. This will also help assess the biological effectiveness of contemporary therapies. The project is progressing according to the original time schedule. Partners have already completed measurements of out-of-field doses while work on analyses of clinical data has been geared towards ensuring consistency of format and overall design of case-control studies. Work in the second year of this two-year Euratom-funded study will result in a series of focused documents defining the current state of knowledge and highlighting factors that limit the confidence with which a clinician can predict normal tissue response to different treatments. The Allegro project aims to assist clinicians making radiotherapy treatment decisions to assess the potential of medium- and long-term healthy tissue harm. This will ultimately enhance survival and after-treatment quality of life for cancer patients.
